


dirty water

by spicyjarvis



Series: dirty water [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Peter Parker, Blood and Violence, Brutal Murder, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I essentially bully Peter Parker, In which the title has nothing to do with the fic, Irondad, Kidnapping, Let the poor guy live, Misunderstandings, Peter Parker Needs a Break, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Plot Twists, Protective Avengers, Protective Tony Stark, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, This is set in a weird timeline, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor, i guess, just because i can, spiderson, this fic has it all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyjarvis/pseuds/spicyjarvis
Summary: “Stand down, Spiderman!” Iron Man’s voice booms. “You’re making it harder than it needs to be.”Peter’s heart thumps against his chest. He can’t. He can’t do this to May. Whatever he did, he can’t-__________Spiderman is framed for a crime he did not commit and the Avengers are put up to the task of catching him. But when they do, it isn't long before they realise that this goes miles deeper into the rabbit hole.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: dirty water [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589197
Comments: 657
Kudos: 1790





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> jumping into 2020 with a promise to actually update this fic
> 
> this is set in a weird timeline. here's some stuff you might need to know to understand:  
> > thor isn't here. he's in asgard. i just can't write him.  
> > beck worked for tony. he stole the glasses himself.  
> > peter got into beef with him as he did every other villain  
> > the whole europe thing did happen - just without impact from tony, happy, ect  
> > peter's identity was not revealed  
> > may knows the secret; so does ned nd MJ  
> > peter doesn't know any of the avengers on a personal level

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit one > 06/04/20 > spelling & wording errors.

“Skip.”

Ned grunts. “Bitch.”

Looking smug, MJ places a red plus-two on the pile. Peter slowly puts an identical card on top of it.

Ned’s fist curls.

“Angry, Leeds?” MJ cooes, condescending enough to crawl down one's spine

“I hate UNO,” is what Ned replies with, throwing his cards onto the floor. “I hate it so much. I’m terrible at it. Can we play something else?”

“It’s a game of luck,” Peter points out. “You _can’t_ be bad at it.”

“And yet, here we are.” MJ starts to put all of the cards back together into one stack.

Grinning, Peter passes over his own hand and clambers to his feet, legs feeling numb. The three of them have been chilling on his bedroom floor playing games ever since they got out of school earlier in the afternoon. Six hours later sees his body becoming stiff and he's tired of playing. All he yearns right now is pulling on the Spiderman suit and swinging around in the cool night air until he's tired enough to collapse the moment his head hits the pillow.

MJ puts the pack of UNO back into the designated Games Shoebox and slides it back to where it’s kept under his bed. “I better go,” she says, stretching her limbs. “Tell your aunt thanks for having me when she gets back from work.”

“Will do.” Peter follows her out of his bedroom and to his front door. “Message the groupchat when you get home so we know you haven’t died, okay?”

“Okay, _mom,”_ is all he gets, in classic MJ fashion. She shoots the boys a smirk. “Later, losers.”

“Later!” Ned calls from Peter’s bedroom.

When Peter comes back, Ned is securing the open end of the chip packets he'd bought over with freezer clips to keep them from going stale. "Going on patrol?" he asks as he watches Peter crawl across the ceiling so as to give him access to the suit shrouded in the space above the panels. They shake and groan from the strain of his weight pulling against their cheap, flimsy material. “You don’t usually patrol on Fridays. Have you already finished the homework or something?”

“Not really a patrol. Just need to stretch.” Peter, having known Ned long enough to be completely comfortable around him, pulls off his shirt and throws it onto the bed. “And no. Haven’t touched it yet. I really don’t want to.”

“You ‘nd me both.” Ned waits for Pete to replace his sweatpants with the legs of the Spiderman suit before he stands up to give him his customary goodbye hug. “Later bro. See you Monday, yeah?”

Peter slaps his hand onto the spider emblem on his chest. The suit tightens to fit his form, except for a bit of extra space where it folds just a bit too much to accommodate the movement of his knees and ankles - which is something he needs to fix when he gets a chance. Having made the suit himself in his bedroom from what he can scavenge from dumpsters or buy cheaply in local electronic stores, there are always a few minor faults here and there.

“Yeah.” He walks Ned to the front door as he did MJ. “Message the groupchat when you’re home.”

“You’re such a mom.”

“Suck one, Leeds.”

Ned chuckles as he makes his way down the long, quiet corridor of Peter’s apartment complex. He offers Peter a friendly wave and a smile before ultimately disappearing around the corner into the stairwell.

Peter is giddy as he closes and locks his front door. The pre-patrol adrenaline rush is starting to take effect. Just the fact that he’s about to go out and fly through the streets under the peaceful watch of the stars gets his blood flowing. Being Spiderman has rarely felt like a job as of late. No - it’s his escape.

With a quick glance at the street below the apartment complex, he crawls across the wall and slides the window shut again with his foot. The cold night air bites him, but it's simply blissful against his skin. He can hear the average hustle and bustle nightlife of the city that never sleeps; he can see the community which he works so hard to protect and serve for. All he can think about is souring with the wind and resting on a rooftop to gaze at the stars before he goes home.

Peter Parker has only been Spiderman for two years. It isn't long enough to be considered a veteran in the game like some other vigilantes roaming the streets, but it's long enough for him to have settled in a comfortable routine. Juggling school, his part-time job, patrol and his admittedly dwindling social life is tough, but he can't say he doesn't enjoy the hustle. It's been a lot easier since May came to terms with his whole second life. Sure, she coddles him a thousand times more, but it saves him from sneaking around her all the time. He always felt bad for lying to her like that.

A thick strand of webbing attaches itself to the corner of the building across the road and he launches himself off the wall of his apartment complex. It’s always the first swing of the night that really gets him in the mood to get moving. There’s just something about soaring through the cold air that makes the stress of his everyday life melt away like butter in the microwave.

It’s as Peter throws out another hand to shoot his second web when his spidey-sense screams a couple of seconds too late and something heavy slams him into the concrete of the closest rooftop.

White-hot pain erupts across his left side like a slap to the face as he lands and the hologram in front of his eyes helpfully informs him that he received two broken ribs thanks to the ordeal. Dread grips his chest with every laboured breath he takes. It takes him everything he has to stay apprehensive. “Give me a damn break,” he grumbles, clambering to his feet, his arms wrapped around his throbbing side.

Out of everyone he expected to turn to look at on a beautiful Friday evening, he definitely did not expect Iron Man himself to be standing there, the glowing repulsors in his palms merely a couple of inches from his face and acutely primed to shoot. The slits in his helmet glare at him through the dark. “Stand down, Spiderman,” he says, voice low and tinny behind the mask.

“Stand down?” Peter echoes. “You attacked _me!”_

“I _really_ don’t want to have to hurt you. Just come with me and you won’t get hurt, okay?”

The boy throws his hands in the air, ignoring the way it painfully jars his ribs. “You break two of my ribs and expect me to just come with you, because you said so? No explanation? Nothing?”

“Uh, yeah. Exactly. Glad we’re on the same page here.”

Peter has absolutely no idea what he did to anger _Iron Man_ of all people, but he _knows_ he hasn’t done anything wrong and therefore refuses to just melt and give the Avenger what he wants - definitely not without knowing what he did to deserve this treatment. “What did I do to piss off the great and mighty Iron Giant today?”

“I’ll explain everything if you just _come with me.”_

Iron Man takes a step towards him and his spidey-sense screams. It pays to listen to it this time; he stumbles backwards away from the Avenger and immediately makes a break for it onto the next rooftop. With every movement, with every breath, his broken ribs hurt more and more, and he knows that he’ll end up doing some serious damage if he doesn’t stop and tend to them before dawn breaks through the night.

“Shit,” Iron Man curses, repulsors whirring. “I need back up over here! He’s running!”

Adrenaline taking control, Peter takes to the alleyways. There’s a good chance that the twisting network of joint New York alleys could be sufficient in disorientating Iron Man just enough for him to get ahead. He doesn’t really know where he’s going. He can’t think. All he knows is that he needs to get away, because there is a fucking _Avenger_ chasing him and everything is pointing to the fact that there are probably more on their way to gang up on him. For fucking nothing! Absolutely _nothing!_

He webs his way out of the alleyway network and takes to swinging through the streets in hopes it will increase his speed. With every laboured breath he pushes out of his body, hot pain shoots through his chest and spine. The hologram in front of his eyes screams red at him, trying to warn him of the damage can do to himself if he keeps swinging with broken ribs. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he wheezes. “What the fuck.”

“I’ve got my eye on him,” says a new voice, and Peter spots a flurry of red, white and blue in the corner of his peripheral vision. The dread once holding his chest now squeezes it with the strength of a grizzly bear. “Stark, get in front of him.”

That world-famous shield all of a sudden flies in front of him and snaps the web he was swinging on. He free-falls for all of half a second before catching himself with another strand. “Woah! Welcome to the party, Captain,” he exclaims. The quip does nothing to ease his anxiety.

There’s fucking _Avengers_ chasing him and Peter’s mind is turning at a million miles per hour as he moves. What could he possibly have done to anger them to the point where they’re hunting him down like he’s some sort of ravenous animal? What do they think he did that warrants the rough treatment from nowhere?

He doesn’t remember the last time he felt fear quite like this. Fear not only for himself but what it could mean if he _does_ get caught. What it could mean to his aunt and his best friends and his life. This is not a fear that he just feels in his chest and stomach; it’s a fear that pulses throughout his entire body. It’s a fear that closes his throat and steals away his vision, black spot by black spot. It’s a fear that turns his blood to ice.

The shield cuts through his web again and this time, Peter isn’t fast enough to catch himself with another strand. He crashes into the side of a building, ribs exploding in pain as they’re further thrown around, and he groans as he crawls across the brick to get to the rooftop. “Swallow me, Earth,” he grumbles. “Fucking swallow me.”

He feels sick and tired but he doesn’t cave. He can’t let himself get caught, even if he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He can’t do that to May. Not after everything she’s already lost under his hands.

“Stand down, Spiderman!” Iron Man’s voice booms. “You’re making it harder than it needs to be.”

Peter’s heart thumps against his chest. He can’t. He can’t do this to May. Whatever he did, he can’t-

Something hard and sharp connects with his side, but it is a dull whisper compared to what follows. Pain as hot as lava shoots through his body and a scream is torn from his throat as he hits the floor. He cannot comprehend anything that's going on; he can't see or taste or hear. All he knows is that he can feel every single tendril of lightning in his veins. He can't move. He can't escape it. It's like he hasn't got control of his own body anymore.

After what feels like hours pass, he finally starts to regain his senses. He can feel the soft whisper of the cold wind against his suit again; a gentle stroke compared to the angry burning pulsing through his entire body. When he cracks open his eyes, the stars in the sky blink wonderfully back at him. It’s almost comforting. He smiles under his mask.

“What in the world was that?” a voice hisses.

“It’s pretty neat, don’t you think?”

“That was hard to watch, Tony.”

Heavy footsteps approach Peter. Two glowing rectangles stare down at him and he flinches. “See, he’s fine. He’s a little dazed, but he’ll be okay. He’s not going anywhere in a hurry. That works out better for us.”

Fingertips brush against his upper arm and Peter does not hesitate in rolling away, despite every pain receptor in his body just _begging_ him to take a break. Everything is spinning, but he thinks he's on his feet. He needs to get the fuck away from here. Away from _them._ There’s a lot of open, empty space on this rooftop, but he feels like a caged animal; trapped and terrified for his life.

“Woah, woah,” Captain America murmurs. “Calm down.”

“Ca- calm down? You’re telling me to calm down?” he babbles hoarsely, stumbling away from the man. Terror pumps through him like it's his own blood. “You- you attack me out of nowhere, you don’t even tell me what the _fuck_ you’re hunting me down for, and you want me to calm down?”

“Hey,” the Captain tries, reaching out again.

“Get the fuck away from me,” he breathes, voice shaking. “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

The Captain turns to look at Iron Man. “Don’t even _consider_ using whatever that was again,” he demands, voice low.

“Yeah, yeah. We got him where we wanted him. You’re welcome.”

It’s like he’s frozen where he stands. There’s an open chance to escape right in this moment and his feet feel like they’re glued to the spot. Black dots spread across his vision. The burning in his body seems to worsen with every tiny movement. He’s so scared and he can’t move and all he wants is to be at home in the warm arms of his Aunt again.

“This will all make sense soon. Just come with us and you’ll see, I promise,” the Captain tries again. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore than we have already. You’re hurt enough. Just come with us and I promise everything will be okay.”

The copious amounts of bullshit that he man spews is enough to spur Peter into thinking at least a little coherently and the first thing he does is turn and shoot a web for the building opposite the street - anything to get away from this place and make it all go away. The movement jars his ribs again and with the added strain from whatever the fuck Iron Man attacked him with, the pain is not just unbearably hot but enough to send him tumbling to the floor again.

“Shit,” Iron Man grumbles. “I’m on it. Barton, get over here.”

Before Peter can move away, a metal gauntlet clamps around his wrist and pulls him to his feet. He just about manages to swallow the fearful cry that claws desperately at his throat, determined to not give them what they want. “Wow," he breathes out. "You're, uh, really set on getting me. You mind filling me in? Wh- what did I do to deserve this again?”

Captain America stares at Peter and rubs anxiously at his chin.

“You know what you did,” is all Iron Man offers.

That isn't a useful answer. “Do I?”

He tugs weakly at the grip on his wrist. “My fingers are locked,” Iron Man informs him, sounding proud of himself. “There’s no way you can get out of this. These babies are built to withstand way more than whatever you have going on in those baby arms. Barton, where are you? We need to get this show on the Goddamn road.”

Peter exhales. The stars twinkle silent encouragement at him above his head. It’s looking dire for him, but it isn't quite over. He’s not one to just sit back and let shit happen to him like this.

And so, with little warning, he plants his feet onto the ground and throws Iron Man over his fucking _head._

“What the fuck!” he exclaims as he crashes onto the ground. The force implemented in the attack dents the suit and sends a five-meter long crack running across the concrete. Clearly disorientated, he has to use his repulsors to assist him in standing upright again.

The Captain lets out a grunt of dismay at the ordeal and tries to pull Peter away, but with his feet planted like this, not even a man of superhuman strength could hope to move him. “Please,” the Avenger whispers into his ear, “just come with us.”

He doesn’t find it in himself to come up with some sort of quip for his spidey-sense all of a sudden explodes in the back of his head and something sharp is pressing into his shoulder blade. “This should be enough to put Spangles over there in a week-long coma,” a new, unfamiliar voice says.

Peter tries to move away, but whatever the newcomer drugged him with, it’s definitely working quickly. Out of the blue, his limbs feel like they’re made of lead. His eyelids grow heavier and heavier the longer he tries to keep them open. He can’t move. His feet are stuck to the ground. His muscles don’t work. He can’t think. He… he can’t...

“Thas’ cheatin’,” he slurs. “Oww. Hoo.”

“Ooh, yeah. That’s the good stuff,” someone says, from somewhere.

“Not when you wake up,” someone else quips.

He hits the ground fast and hard. The last thing Peter sees before everything dissolves into darkness is the open arms of the stars that twinkle at him from so far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are encouraging. finger guns.
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	2. CHAPTER ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jarvis is my GUY so SHUT UP
> 
> edit one > 08/04/20 > spelling & wording errors.

**THREE DAYS EARLIER**

“Sir, the team have a call from Nick Fury.”

Tony, who had been deeply focused on adding upgrades to the intricate wiring under the metal plating of his suit’s left gauntlet, startles at JARVIS’ voice and accidentally slaps his half-full mug off the work surface next to him. It shatters, shooting shards of ceramic and lukewarm coffee across the floor. “Way to sneak up on me, J,” he mutters.

In any other situation, the AI would have replied with something snarky that would anger Tony despite the fact that he had purposefully programmed this feature in. However, today seemed to be an exception. “The team have a call from Nick Fury, Sir. He says that it is in your best interest that you answer it with the team present as soon as possible.”

“Nick Fury,” Tony echoes. “Why would- wait. Did you say the _team_ have a call?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Why are you telling me? Ice Cube downstairs is the man in charge.”

“Because everybody is waiting for you in conference room B3, Sir.”

Tony hurriedly closes the wiring behind the metal plating on the gauntlet and makes his way to the door. He has to duck away from DUM-E, who is simply attempting to offer him another mug of coffee to replace the puddle on the floor, but ends up turning too fast and flinging it across the lab. “Clean that up!” he calls before the door locks behind him.

When he gets to conference room B3, Steve doesn’t look particularly happy. Neither does Nick Fury, who’s frown is dangerously thunderous even from behind the large hologram he’s displayed on at the head of the room. _“Nice of you to join us, Stark,”_ he bites out in classic Fury fashion.

“What’s good?” he asks casually as he takes his seat between Steve and Bucky.

_“Not this, that’s for damn sure.”_

Sam makes a face.

_“What I’m about to show you is an unedited clip taken from someone’s phone three weeks ago in the capital city of Helsinki in Finland. Hope you’re not queasy.”_

Nick Fury’s face disappears before it is replaced with the video. It starts all at once; the camera holder's feet are slamming against the concrete as they run, accompanied by the sound of laboured breathing and the familiar rumble of public panic. Then, in a single, sickening arc of movement, shaky footage shows somebody clad in a vibrant red and blue suit slamming a wailing police car against a building. The officer inside tries to clamber out of the window with their gun in hand, but the offender simply uses their webs to snatch it out of their hands and starts to unload bullets into the car. _“Holy shit,”_ the camera holder mumbles, sounding frightened.

There’s a deafening _boom_ and the camera spins violently before landing face-down on the floor. After a couple of seconds, it’s picked up to show the police car now sprouting red-hot flames that licks the air with its thick black smoke. If one were to listen closely, they would be unfortunate enough to hear the screams of the officer as he is burned to death trying to escape the wreckage.

The video goes to black. It’s replaced again by Nick Fury’s stern frown. 

It sickens Tony to the stomach to think about what everybody present at that scene had been through. To think about the poor officer of the law who was lost to whoever that psychopath was. He has no doubt that the footage only showed a sliver of whatever happened that day - there had to be a reason that officer was there in the first place. How did he not know enough this sooner?

“How many people?” Natasha prompts.

Nick Fury exhales.

_"Thirteen dead. Twenty-two injured.”_

A tense silence plagues the room.

_“SHIELD took over the case as soon as we saw this footage. We managed to keep it down before it became world news - the last thing we need right now is public panic.”_

The silence withholds.

Tony subconsciously rubs at his wrists, feeling a familiar knot starting to tighten in his chest and throat. That’s thirty-five people who were impacted by the event. That’s thirteen families who are mourning and twenty-two families who can only hope that their relative will be okay. That’s thirty-five families whose lives changed for the worse that day. That’s-

A hand lands on his arm. Bucky is looking at him. “Breathe,” he whispers and passes him his spare hair tie to occupy his hands.

“Why are you showing us this?” Bruce presses on.

_“Because the person who caused all of this seems to be someone we've definitely heard of before.”_

A red and blue suit. The webs. Tony’s heart skips a beat. There’s only one person running around who fits that specific description - one person who is such an unlikely choice that Tony doesn't even want to think about believing it. “Spiderman,” he murmurs. Then, louder; “you mean to say that fucking _Spiderman_ did that? The guy who helps old ladies across the road and does backflips for fun? That guy?”

“I once watched Spiderman spend an hour trying to look for someone’s dog in the park. It won him a hotdog,” Clint says, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “There’s no way that this sicko is _Spiderman.”_

Sam shifts uncomfortably. “Isn’t Spiderman, like, twelve?”

Fury pulls up another hologram showing two images - one of Spiderman taken by someone on the street, and one a screenshot taken from the video. The screenshot is low quality, but it’s clear to see that the suits worn by the offender in both images are pretty much identical down to a T.

“Anyone could copy that suit design,” Steve points out.

_“We’ve done the tests we can. Every single one of them points to these two being the same person,”_ Fury counters. _“Identical height. Identical weight distribution. Identical ‘fighting’ stances, although that one was a last resort. It’s hard when all you have is video footage - and not knowing jack shit about the target doesn’t help. We had three agents sent to the scene to collect evidence, but it was like he just disappeared. Every single trace of him gone except for the carnage he left behind.”_

“Do we have any evidence Spiderman was still in New York at the time?” Tony tries.

“Why are you so determined to make sure it isn’t Spiderman, Stark?” Clint questions, head tilted like a curious puppy. “There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence against him here. What else do we need to know?”

“Because if we’re going to be doing what I think we are, I don’t want to get the wrong person.”

Fury sighs. _“This was three weeks ago. Remember what happened three weeks ago?”_

Of _course_. The power outage. Every single building that uses electricity left in the dark for exactly five hours and thirty-seven minutes for reasons no one can seem to explain. The Avengers Tower, which uses its own source of renewable energy to power the building, had been one of the only places with light throughout the late evening. It was no biggie at the time. No one seemed to be worried about the hiccup.

“The power outage,” Natasha says. She seems to have connected the dots if the look on her face is anything to judge by.

_“The time of the power outage fits perfectly with the time that this event occurred in Finland, meaning that any evidence of Spiderman being in New York at the time doesn’t exist. It’s suspicious - we’ll be looking into that. We took the time to check any battery-powered cameras, phones or any other recording device just in case, but no dice._

_“We’ve got limited options. Our best bet right now is to take in Spiderman for interrogation. However, SHIELD is out of the country already and we haven’t got the resources to send enough agents to capture him - there’s no doubt he’s going to try and run away the minute he finds we’re on his tail. In light of this, I thought I’d ask my two star agents and their teammates to help me out instead.”_

“Star agent?” Clint repeats. “Ooh, I’m blushing.”

Natasha kicks him in the shin.

_“This is serious, Barton.”_ Fury shakes his head, lips pressed together in a straight line. _“I assume you’ve realised what I need you to do. Keep him off the streets. He’s guilty until proven innocent in this case. It’s either he confesses or we find enough evidence to prove that it wasn’t him at that scene.”_

“We understand,” Steve confirms.

_“Good.”_

The call disconnects.

The hair tie snaps.

-

**PRESENT DAY**

Steve Rogers stands in the threshold of the fifteen-floor infirmary, watching Tony as he upgrades the outside locks on the door to accommodate for their new guest’s incredible strength.

They _did_ have a holding room specifically set aside and cleaned for when they caught Spiderman, but the amount of damage dealt to him in the ordeal of actually securing him resulted in Bruce looking him over and deciding that he needs the infirmary before anything else.

“It’s been a day,” Steve observes out loud.

“The syringe I gave Clint might have had a higher dosage than he needed,” Bruce tells him. “It wasn’t dangerous. He’s fine. He’ll probably be awake tomorrow morning if he isn’t awake later today.”

The vigilante looks peaceful where he lies on the infirmary bed, his chest rising and falling slowly. Seeing him so calm and still is a frightening contrast to yesterday, when he’d been screaming on the ground and shaking so hard that Steve had been sure it was closer to vibrating. It makes him cringe with guilt just thinking about it. There was probably much better ways to get what they wanted.

They weren’t sure how to go about removing his getup, so Bruce had resorted to ripping the front of it open with a knife - which was a challenge in itself, for the material was surprisingly strong - and pulling it off the upper half of his body, leaving just his legs suit-clad. Tony had wanted to remove the mask too but Bruce, ever the common sense filter, didn’t let it happen. Despite what the guy had done to get him in this mess, they wanted to at least give him a shred of his privacy.

Not only is the door being upgraded, but Tony had also implemented some cuffs on the infirmary bed. They’re made of a thick layer of vibranium and are impossible to break out of, even for someone with super strength - something he knows from experience after testing them for Tony not too long beforehand. They wanted to be sure that there was no way that he’s able to escape back onto the streets before they get medical clearance to move him into his proper cell.

“What’re we going to do when he recovers?” Steve asks.

Just about finished with the lock upgrades, Tony wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “You were there for the SHIELD meeting, were you not, Frozone? We’re going to interrogate the fuck out him until he confesses to his mess.”

At that, Steve feels a sickening chill slither up his spine. He doesn’t want to believe that the scrawny-looking, bruised kid lying on the infirmary bed in front of him is the murderer of _thirteen_ innocent Finnish citizens. A large part of him knows that it’s probably him in that video. He fucking hates it.

“He’s underweight,” Bruce notices.

“No kidding,” Tony says. “The guy has the figure of a twig.”

The doctor is chewing at his nails, staring absently at the patient. “All of this scarring on his chest,” he murmurs. “And there on his neck, like someone tried to slice his throat open. There was the scar of what looked like a bullet hole wound underneath this bandage.”

Steve doesn’t want to look, but he does anyway. There’s scarring everywhere, white blemishes against peach skin - some are minor, just over the size of papercuts, but others look large and as if they bled a whole lot when originally dealt. It makes his heart twinge. He tries to remember that this is a guy who murdered thirteen innocent civilians and injured twenty-two more.

“JARVIS, lockdown the window,” Tony says.

A sheet of metal typically used when the building is put into lockdown mode slams over the inside of the window and the ceiling lights turn on.

“Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Bruce echoes. He prepares to leave the room, collecting up his things and throwing his bag over his shoulder. Hand on the threshold, he pauses and turns around again at the door. “I’m done until he wakes up. He’ll be okay when he wakes up. Probably disorientated, probably still tired, but otherwise fine.”

“JARVIS will update you,” Tony informs him.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Steve says.

The doctor offers the duo a smile before leaving. Steve watches his departing back, eyebrows creased. This mission has really shaken Bruce - he can see it in the way he moves around Spiderman; in the way that he looks at him as he sleeps. Spiderman doesn’t look or act like a murderer, but they’ve hardly met the guy before. What do they know?

With his mood suddenly declining, Steve decides it’s probably time he makes his leave. There’s leftover food in the communal fridge to be eaten - they don’t really need to save leftovers, but Clint always insists they do anyway - and he feels like losing some steam to beating up a couple punching bags in the gym.

When he turns to go, Tony is staring at him. “Why so glum, chum?”

“Oh, you know.” Steve feels that it should be glaringly obvious to a man this intelligent. “It’s the whole investigation of the murder of thirteen people thing.”

“We got the guy,” Tony says dismissively. “We got him. It’ll be a breeze.”

Steve swallows. There’s something that doesn’t feel right here.

-

May Parker is a hard-working and capable nurse who works the eight hour night shift from 7PM to 3AM. She works five days a week - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On days where she happens to be working, she usually gets home, sleeps throughout most of the day and then goes to work again. On days where she isn’t working, she likes to relax with Peter and do all of the domestic things that make her feel human again. The cycle repeats.

She genuinely finds enjoyment in her job. Saving lives gives her a purpose and the dynamic between her and her colleagues is comfortable and fun. It’s not particularly well paying, but with Peter willingly adding his own salary that he gets in his part-time job at that sandwich shop he loves so much, they make enough to get by. They work hard. They’re happy. It’s been like this for years, but May loves it. She’s a creature of routine.

However, being a creature of routine means that when the routine is broken, she’s affected by it more than she probably should be.

She gets home after her Friday shift, takes a shower and goes to bed straight away. Peter is usually done patrolling by 1AM, so she expects him to be asleep and feels too knocked out to check.

When she wakes up at 4PM the next day, she knows Peter will be at work until 5:30. It takes him fifteen minutes to walk home and three minutes to swing, so depending on what mode of transport he decides to take today, he’ll be home sooner or later. She likes to have dinner ready for him by the time he gets back and so that’s what she sets about doing.

The clock hits 5:57PM and he isn’t home yet. May feels uneasy, but he’s been later before, so she brushes her worries off and carries on scrubbing down the kitchen island counter.

When the clock hits 6:30PM, she starts to listen to her anxieties. The first thing she does is check his ceiling for the Spiderman suit. It doesn’t fall out when she nudges the tile open with a pole and so she assumes he had bought his suit to work and set out on patrol immediately afterwards. It’s unusual for Peter to not tell her when his schedule changes - he knows how much it worries her - so she decides to call his phone next.

There’s no answer. She calls once, twice, three times - and every single time, it rings and rings until it goes to voicemail. With every unanswered call, her anxiety increases tenfold. It’s _really_ out of character for Peter to not pick up. The boy has picked up calls in the middle of scraps with muggers and bank robbers before.

“I really need that tracker,” she mumbles into her empty apartment.

(One of the agreements set out after May discovered her nephew’s side life is that they implement a tracker into the suit so that she knows where it’s going at all times. However, Peter couldn’t find the resources he needed to make that happen and they don’t exactly have the money to buy it anywhere else. In light of this, May told him that some cheap GPS should do until he can apply it properly, but they never got around to getting it.)

She rubs worriedly at her forehead. The only other people who could possibly know where Peter is includes his boss and his two best friends, but they all tell her the same thing - they have no idea where he is or where he could be. The only information she progresses with is that, according to Ned, he'd gone on patrol earlier on in the evening. Of course he had.

May sits down on the worn couch.

Inhales.

Exhales.

“He’s okay,” she tells herself out loud, because it’s the words she needs to hear. “He’s the strongest boy I know. He’s so, so capable of taking care of himself. He’ll come home. He’ll come home.”

She repeats that in her head, over and over, until she starts to believe it. Those gaping jaws of dread that threaten to bite her are pushed to the back of her brain. _“If I don’t come home in time for dinner, give me three days,”_ he would always remind her when her worries got the best of her. _“If I’m not home in three days, that’s when you start calling the police.”_

Give him three days. That’s what Peter would want her to do right now.

So that’s exactly what she does.

-

_"You haven’t seen him?”_

“Not since Friday night,” Ned says. “He was going on patrol just before I left at around nine. I haven’t heard of him staying out for this long.”

There’s a shaky sigh. _“Okay. Thanks, Ned.”_

“He’ll be okay. You know Peter.”

_“I know. Please tell me if you find anything out.”_

“I will. I sincerely hope he’s okay.”

_“So do I.”_

The call disconnects. Ned drops his phone onto the bed beside him and stares up at his ceiling.

One of Peter Parker’s best qualities is his ability to communicate - he always tells people everything they need to know. He always texts May to tell her whenever something is going to change. Sure, sometimes he filters out some details, but it’s always so that May doesn’t kill herself worrying for him. It’s because of this that he understands why his Aunt feels so suffocated about him being missing for this long.

As if on autopilot, he picks up his phone and calls Peter. He isn’t surprised when he doesn’t answer. He is surprised, however, when his screen lights up with an incoming call from MJ. It isn’t like her to call first.

“Hey,” he says.

_“Peter’s missing.”_

“I know. May called me.”

There’s this tense silence that makes Ned’s skin crawl. 

“He’ll be okay, won’t he?”

_“It’s Peter. He’s the strongest of us all. He’ll come home.”_

Hearing these words coming from MJ is comforting. He smiles. “You’re right,” he says. “He’ll come home.”

-

"It’s Peter. He’s the strongest of us all. He’ll come home.”

There’s a pause. _“You’re right. He’ll come home.”_

MJ smiles. “See you Monday.”

_“See you then, MJ.”_

She disconnects the call.

Outside of her bedroom window, the New York nightlife is as bustling as ever. Groups of rowdy teenagers are gathered in the street across from her apartment complex. Couples hold hands as they stroll down the streets, laughing between each other. Two different dogs owned by two different people touch noses and wag their tails as they pass one another.

She wishes she could see him now, perched on some rooftop wearing that stupid red and blue suit, legs swinging over the edge as he looks over the city he protects; over the people who he gives so much to without asking for anything in return.

He’ll come home, she tells herself.

He’ll come home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments much appreciated. loving the support!
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	3. CHAPTER TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like some writers forget peter parker is actually an extremely smart person.
> 
> edit one > 08/04/20 > spelling & wording errors.

Peter Parker doesn’t remember waking up. 

It feels like he’s been staring at the ceiling for hours.

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t quite remember falling asleep, either. The last thing he can recall is playing UNO on his bedroom floor with Ned and MJ. After that, no matter how hard he shakes his brain juices around, everything becomes a little foggy and disorientating.

“Hm. Weird.”

When he tries to get out of bed, his arms don't move with him. He glances to his left, notices the thick metal cuff pinning him down by the wrists, and suddenly everything hits him like a fucking freight train.

_“Stand down, Spiderman.”_

_“Stand down? You attacked me!”_

_Pain as hot as lava shoots through his body and a scream is torn from his throat as he hits the floor._

It’s like the sudden recollection kick-started his brain because, as if someone just flicked a switch, those dull aches and pains in his body become excruciating. His throat burns like he swallowed a bucketful of acid, his limbs are achy and cumbersome and everything else is steadily harrowing and uncomfortable. Every time he moves his head, the room tilts and spins. 

He feels the need to get up, to move around, to look for something to distract him, but he can’t move at all. He grits his teeth as he strains against the cuffs that restrict him with every ounce of strength in his body, but he’s sapped of energy. Weak. Exhausted.

Flopping his head back into the pillow, he finally starts to register everything wrong with his surroundings. Clearly, he’s not in his bedroom, or anything that even _looks_ like a bedroom - it looks as if he’s in some kind of medical room what with the sterile white appearance. However, it he observes that it’s missing nearly everything a normal medical room has in it - there’s no equipment or anything, just a bare bedside table and a swivel chair tucked into the corner.

It’s then that he notices that there’s no window. Or, rather, they closed it behind the thick sheet of metal to the right of the bed he lies on. Seeing that along with the inescapable cuffs holding him down causes reality to finally click in his head.

They caught him.

“Crap."

Of course they did. It’s the Avengers - he doesn’t know why he thought he had even a sliver of a chance of getting away from them. They’ve got more people, money, strength and fighting ability then he’ll probably ever have throughout his entire life.

“Stupid,” he gripes. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

When he first started going out as Spiderman regularly, he knew there would probably be a lot of people who didn’t like him. Anyone with half a brain knows that - there’s always people who don’t understand; who think you’re doing something wrong just because it isn’t the average definition of right. That's okay. He's used to that. He just never expected to be despised so much that it comes to _this._

He wonders how long he’s been here. He thinks about his Aunt, his friends, and whether it’s been long enough for them to start worrying about where he is. The only bit of comfort he has is that he knows May will follow the advice he gave her all that time ago, when she first found out about his side life as Spiderman - _“if I don’t come home in time for dinner, give me three days. If I’m not home in three days, that’s when you start calling the police.”_

Ten minutes sees Peter dozing off again, for he’s still tired and becoming bored. It’s only as he lets his head fall to the side and brush against his shoulder that he realises how much of his suit is actually missing from his body.

The whole section of the suit from the waist upwards looks as if it was sliced down the middle and pulled down to his legs, he observes as he cranes his neck to look over his body. He inhales, irritated - it takes him a long time to patch up the little slices and holes he gets on a routine patrol, so he can’t even imagine how long _this_ will take to repair.

Thankfully, his mask is still on. That’s probably the only good part about everything going on right now. Sure, any useful technology inside of it - for instance, the voice-activated texting feature and his webshooters - is disabled and most likely broken entirely, but at the very least, he’s still got his identity.

He’s starting to get impatient. With nothing to do, no one to talk to and nowhere to go, Peter decides to take a shot in the dark and shouts into the empty space, “is anybody there?”

A beat passes before a voice replies, “I am.”

Startled, Peter jolts. “Woah,” he murmurs, having not expected a response at all - and definitely not a disembodied one. “Um. Hi.”

“Hello.”

Peter pays close attention to the voice, then, and concludes that it probably comes from somewhere in the ceiling. He can’t quite pinpoint where exactly - it almost sounds like it’s coming from the _entire_ surface area - but he knows it’s somewhere up there. The slight surge of electricity he hears when the disembodied voice speaks clues him into the fact that it most likely isn’t the speech of a biological or mechanical creature but an AI instead.

Intrigued, and glad to have something to distract him away from the burning in his body, he confirms with the voice, “you’re an AI, right?”

“Yes. I am JARVIS.”

“Hi, JARVIS. I’m Spiderman.”

“Hello, Spiderman.”

“...hi.”

_This conversation just went in a circle,_ Peter thinks. He shifts uncomfortably, unsure of what to say next, but desperate to speed things up a little. He doesn’t know how much longer he can bear being trapped in here and the lack of real information as to _why_ is weighing a heavy pit in his stomach. “JARVIS?”

“Yes?”

“What do I do now?”

“One moment. Dr. Banner is coming to check on you.”

Peter’s heart does a backflip. Logically, it makes sense that Dr. Banner would be in the building, but he doesn’t understand why he deserves to be seen to by a man who can turn into a gigantic green monster when a normal medic can do the job. Whatever he did to get in this mess, they must really not trust him.

Not that he’s complaining, of course. He’s worshipped Dr. Bruce Banner for as long as he can remember, ever since he read his theories and researched the work he does. The advancements in technology and science he’s accomplished have inspired him for a long time. It’s a huge shame that the first time he ever gets to meet one of his long-term heroes is while he’s pinned to a bed like some kind of experiment.

The door opens and closes. With his salt-and-pepper hair and warm eyes comes Bruce Banner, clutching a clipboard like a doctor in a movie. He’s dressed down, with his white doctor’s coat thrown on lazily over a t-shirt and sweatpants. It takes everything in Peter to repress the urge to start gushing in a thrilled frenzy to the man - he needs answers before anything else.

“Hello,” the doctor greets.

“Hi,” Peter replies. “Mind telling me what all this is for, Doc?”

-

“Hi,” Spiderman says. “Mind telling me what all this is for, Doc?”

Bruce freezes, because he really doesn’t want to have this conversation at all, especially with no one else on the team present. He breathes out and tries to change the subject by telling him, “I’m just here to check on how you’re doing. Can I touch you?”

“Might as well.”

The doctor dutifully ignores the voice in his brain screaming _MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERDER!_ as he approaches the vigilante. The best way to get through this, he decides, is to turn on full doctor mode. He presses a palm over his broken ribs and watches Spiderman flinch. “Still hurts?” he says.

“Mhm.”

“Anything else hurts?”

Spiderman sighs as if it’s supposed to be obvious. “Literally _everything_ hurts, Doc.”

“I can administer morphine.”

“God, _yes._ Administer away.”

Bruce turns to leave the room, but pauses at the door. “You have super metabolism.”

“Yeah?”

With that confirmed, Bruce goes to find what he has in the supply closet. Without accurate knowledge of the correct dosage for Spiderman, there’s a risk that he could give the guy an accidental overdose, but he thinks that it should work out okay as long as it’s not more than what he gives Steve.

When he comes back, Spiderman is trying to shimmy his wrists out of the cuffs. “Oh,” he says when he notices Bruce. “Erm. I wasn’t doing anything.”

The doctor doesn’t say anything, just works on administering the morphine so he can get out as quickly as possible. Being in the same room as a suspected cold-blooded murderer makes him more than a little uncomfortable, especially when he looks and sounds so… _child-like._ Everything about this just feels so wrong.

“Hey, Doc.”

He pushes the morphine into Spiderman’s system.

“Doc.”

Finally, he looks up. “Yes?”

“Why am I here?”

The doctor sucks in a long, deep breath and holds it. This is the last conversation he wants to be having, but when his eyes gloss over the cuffs and the bruised boy pinned underneath them, he feels like the least he can give is something of an explanation - even if he keeps it short. “You’re a suspect.”

There’s a tense pause. “A suspect?”

“A suspect in a case.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Spiderman lets his head fall back against the pillow, frustrated. He seems like he’s about to say something else before his body suddenly relaxes and he releases a relieved hum. The morphine must have kicked in - his previous line of conversation is forgotten. Thank God for that. “Ooh, shit. Shit. That feels so good. Keep it coming, Doc. Oooh, baby."

As he departs, Bruce tries not to smile

-

"Spiderman woke up sometime ago,” is the first thing Bruce says as he strolls casually into the communal living room.

At this, Tony practically throws his bag of Cheetos over his head. “He woke up and JARVIS told no one?” he says critically.

“He told me,” Bruce offers.

“What the fuck, J.”

“Cold betrayal,” Sam mutters.

The AI doesn’t have anything to say. Tony rubs his hands together and makes a beeline for the elevator. “Let’s go, then,” he encourages enthusiastically, “let’s interrogate this scrawny motherfucker.”

“Hold on,” the doctor says, and Tony halts in his tracks. “He still needs a couple more hours for his ribs to heal up properly. All I did was give him some morphine to relieve aches and pains.”

“Seems odd that we’re helping a mass murderer like that,” Clint, who had been quietly munching on Tony’s Cheeto bag on the couch until now, points out. “You’d think we’d just throw him straight into that holding cell. No sympathy bullshit. Badda bing badda boom. You know?”

Sam leans over Clint’s shoulder to grab a Cheeto from the bag, seamlessly dodging when Clint growls ‘mine’ and tries to swipe his hand away. “He’d probably be more willing to talk if we’re at least a little bit nice to him,” he says, and pops it innocently into his mouth.

“And why haven’t we unmasked him yet, by the way?”

“It was a strategy on our part,” Tony pipes up. “I wanted to unmask him, but then I saw the _light._ Spiderman notoriously cares about keeping his identity a secret. We let him keep something he gives a shit about protecting and we can hold it over his head to squeeze out information from him.” He strokes his beard. “And if that doesn’t work, I guess we can rip it off his stupid head and threaten to tell the whole of fucking New York.”

Clint makes a thoughtful face.

“That’s actually very smart,” Sam says.

“Stark Industries is successful for a reason, you know.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Bruce jokes.

Tony shoots the doctor one of his charming, playboy winks before addressing the remainder of the room. “I’m going to go and say hi to him,” he informs them, “uhh, if anyone wants to join me… feel free.”

Nobody looks particularly keen. Tony passes it off as the whole ‘I don’t really feel like being in the same room as someone who has probably murdered thirteen Finnish citizens right now’ thing that they have going for them.

-

“Hi, May.”

_“Please tell me you’re calling with good news.”_

It’s early evening and the sky outside of Ned’s window is painted with a striking crescendo of pinks, reds and oranges. The sun, as it dips below the horizon, casts pools of gold across the streets of New York that turns those somber shades of grey and brown into a rainbow of autumn colour. There are people outside of his apartment taking pictures of the scenery.

Ned rarely gets to see the good sunsets in New York, but on the rare days where he can, Peter shows up at his window donning his Spiderman suit with MJ in tow and they all sit on a rooftop and watch the sun go down together. It’s an unspoken tradition between the three of them. It’s probably the reason sunsets make him so Goddamn happy.

Today, Peter doesn’t appear at his window, rapping on the glass with one hand while the other holds him to the wall outside, but it’s all he can think about. “No,” he says apologetically. “I just wanted to check up on you. And, um, my mom invited you for dinner tonight. MJ will be there too.”

There’s a pause. _“You know, that would be really, really nice.”_

Ned smiles. Upon discovering that Peter had gone missing through Ned, his mom - his lovely, caring mom who adores the Parkers like they’re blood relatives - did not hesitate to demand that he call her up and invite her over as soon as she’s available. “She’s all alone without Peter,” she’d told him. “Some company and a lovely hot meal won’t fix it, but it’ll let her know that she still has people on her side.”

“She says dinner will be ready at eight. You’re welcome to come whenever, though.”

_“Tell her thank you for me.”_

Ned hears May sob before she disconnects the call.

-

Tony expects Spiderman to be a little stand-offish when he lets himself into his freshly modified infirmary, so when the vigilante shouts, “don’t you dare come near me again!” and yanks violently at his vibranium cuffs, he’s at the very least mildly surprised.

He hesitates in the threshold. That new piece of technology he used on the guy yesterday - he doesn’t have a proper name for it quite yet, but it’s probably best described as a long-distance, high-voltage taser - must have really done a number on him for him to deserve a greeting like _this._ He can’t help but feel like it was a fraction too harsh to use it on him yesterday.

(Silently, he justifies it by reminding himself that this guy is most likely the murderer of thirteen innocent Finnish civilians, and therefore _deserved_ it.)

“I don’t have the taser,” Tony tries.

“I don’t care.” Spiderman’s voice cracks, and for the first time it occurs to Tony that they don't even _know_ how old this guy is.

He doesn’t press the topic, though - there’s no way the guy will be answering any questions he has if just his presence alone is enough to rile him up. Instead, he takes one more step inside of the infirmary and closes the door behind him. Building something of a bridge between them could be enough to coax even just a little from him. “Just came to check on you, that’s all,” he says steadily. “Doc says you, uh, got morphine for your pain.”

“I wonder who’s fault _that_ was.”

The man combs his eyes over Spiderman from the swivel chair left in the corner. Even though he can’t see his face behind the mask, he can identify his restlessness; the tightness in his legs, the way his fingers drum impatiently against his palm, his long, deep breathes. There’s no doubt that lying in the same position like that is beginning to make him feel stiff.

It’s then that he notices the thick scar on his neck that peeks out just below where the mask ends - a jagged white blemish against peach skin, as if whoever had tried to cut his throat open had been doing it quickly and carelessly. It looks like it should have initially been enough to kill him. Without so much as a second thought, Tony begins to probe, "who did that to you?"

Spiderman just cocks his head at him.

“That scar on your neck."

Spiderman visibly hesitates. “It- um, it’s a long story.” The ‘just thinking about reliving the events of that day makes me feel sick to my stomach’ goes unspoken, but Tony can hear it loud and clear.

“I understand.”

One could cut the silence between them with a butter knife. The sheets on the bed ruffle as Spiderman moves around uncomfortably, straining his wrists against the hold of the cuffs. “Those are vibranium,” Tony informs him. “Not even Capcicle could hope to break through those. I had him test them out and everything.”

The vigilante sighs, irritated. “How long am I going to be here for?”

“That depends on you,” Tony replies vaguely. 

Another sigh. This one seems angrier.

Tony regards Spiderman for a moment before he stands up and heads towards the door. Before he opens it, however, he stops and says into the air, “JARVIS, unlock the cuffs on Spiderman’s bed for me.”

The moment they flip open, there's a ruckus behind him. He turns around to see that Spiderman has attached himself to the wall, creating even more of a distance between him and Tony. The fact that Spiderman can stick to surfaces like that is common knowledge, but he admits that it's still quite strange to witness before your own eyes, so understandably Tony is taken aback by the sight of it. "Oh."

“Why…" Spiderman sounds nervous. "Why did you do that?”

Tony hesitates - he isn't sure he quite knows himself. He supposes that seeing Spiderman look so visibly uncomfortable made him think that maybe, just _maybe,_ he owes him _that_ much freedom. “You looked like you needed to stretch,” he admits to him. “Just, be careful of your ribs. I’m tired of you taking up infirmary space. Oh, and don’t go about trying to escape or they go back on. Trust me, we’ll know. Capiche?”

Staring at him, Spiderman cautiously lowers himself onto the floor. “Capiche.”

“Great. Now that we have that sorted, you hungry at all?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are much appreciated. <3
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	4. CHAPTER THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning - panic attacks

The moment the door clicks shut behind Tony Stark, Peter gets to work.

While he’d been lying on the bed trapped underneath those vibranium cuffs, he’d had an incredible realisation - he could probably break open the lock on the door with his bare hands. In fact, the only thing that had been holding him back from doing so right there and then was the cuffs that he knew he couldn’t have possibly broken through.

They’re not a problem anymore, however - Tony Stark is an inspirational, successful and very intelligent man, but he was stupid enough to trust Peter enough to release him. Now that he can use his hands again, all he has to do is break open that lock and make a break for it through the nearest window.

If he judged the AI correctly, there’s a likely chance that JARVIS will inform everybody else that he’s trying to escape as soon as he advances on that door. However he knows he’s fast - if he can break open that lock in one go, he’ll be out of the window in five seconds. Not even an Avenger can move  _ that  _ quickly.

He pulls the top half of his suit back over his shoulders. It won’t go on properly with the large rip going straight down the middle, but it stays over him well enough when he puts his arms into the sleeves, so he figures it’ll do until he can get back to his apartment and get to work on the repairs.

After a minute of sizing up the door, Peter collects every morsel of energy he can collect from his weary, food-deprived body and sends a clenched fist directly through the lock - except, it doesn’t break in any way, shape or form, and he can feel electrifying pain shoot from his knuckles right up to his shoulder.

“Oh my God,” he mutters, inspecting his hand. “That really hurt. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Much to his surprise, JARVIS helpfully informs him: “Mr. Stark specifically reinforced not only the lock, but also the entire door, in order to keep you from escaping. I would not recommend trying to break out any further or you will hurt yourself.”

“Yeah?” Peter says, looking at the door. Challenge accepted.

He sits on the floor in front of the lock, his back against the foot of the bed. There’s no way he’s going to be able to take the lock apart with his hands if force didn’t break it initially, so he figures that, with tools, he can deactivate it without having to break it anyway. Tony Stark had made yet another mistake - although his webshooters were deactivated and therefore useless for their initial purpose, it doesn’t mean he can’t take it apart and use it for something else. 

With the knowledge that he has a spare at home, he hurriedly snaps the spring steel off the webshooter, catching the spinneret nozzle when it falls with it and shoving it inside of his glove. He uses the pointed corner of the spring steel to remove the screws that hold in the panel covering the inner wiring. Adrenaline races through his blood and his heart hammers with anxiety, but he keeps his hands steady. They’ve got to be if he’s going to do this quick enough to get out.

“Shit,” he murmurs. It’s biologically activated from the outside, probably by a fingerprint, with the data most likely stored within JARVIS. He lets out a long sigh - these take a long time to work through depending on the quality and, since it was Tony Stark who created this, he has no doubt it’ll be tough to deactivate properly.

Conscious of his quickly depleting escape window, he decides to do what he does best - wing it.

He takes the sharp corner of the spring steel in his hand and rams it into the inner wiring of the lock with every ounce of strength he can muster. It cuts through most, if not all, of the wires and he hears a satisfying click as the door unlocks. “So much for doing this properly,” he mutters to himself.

When he opens the door, he’s met with a corridor. At one end is an elevator and at the other is a corner, with windows making up the back wall. It’s just too good to be true. He tries not to think about why any of the Avengers haven’t come to confront him yet and instead focuses on making his escape.

As he sprints towards the window, his mind speeds through his possible escape methods past this point. His webshooters are out of commission until he fixes his suit so he’s going to have to smash the window and crawl down the wall to the floor. It’ll increase his chances of getting spotted and therefore caught tenfold, but he’s got no other-

“Spiderman! Stay where you are!”

He spots the disc of red, white and blue out of the corner of his eye, panics and dives through the glass without so much as a second thought.

And then he’s falling.

“Shit,” he mutters. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

The sidewalk races towards him. Dread takes a grip of his chest and stomach as he readies himself for the approaching impact. It twists and twists until he feels sick. He’ll die, he thinks. He’s going to die here and now because he’s too fucking stupid to even escape properly. May is going to be left alone and it’s all his fau-

_ It’s as Peter throws out another hand to shoot his second web when his spidey-sense screams a couple of seconds too late and something heavy slams him into the concrete of the closest rooftop. _

The boy gasps reflexively.

Iron Man is clutching him by the stomach, repulsors whirring, eye slits cold and emotionless as they regard Peter. “I leave for one second and you’re throwing yourself out of windows,” he snaps, the bitterness so present in his voice that one could probably wring it out like a soaked towel. “You’re paying for my broken window, you know.”

He doesn’t say anything, just wriggles within the Iron Giant’s unbreakable grip. This has got to be one of the most humiliating and terrifying experiences of his life. All he wants to do is go home and let his Aunt know that he’s okay. Is that too much to ask for?

He’s deposited back in the window he broke through and Black Widow -  _ the  _ Black Widow - immediately steps forward, manhandles his hands behind his back and cuffs his wrists with what he can only assume is solid vibranium. “Ow,” Peter croaks. “What is it with you guys and handcuffs?”

Captain America walks into his line of vision. It’s odd to see him dressed down in sweatpants and a t-shirt; it’s even odder to realise that he looks just as intimidating as he does in his actual suit. There’s this disappointed dad look on his face that almost makes Peter feel like  _ he’s  _ the one in the wrong here. “Son, if you stopped resisting, this would be over and done with much faster.”

“Don’t call me son,” Peter bites back.

It’s then that Iron Man lands, and Tony Stark steps out of the suit. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to release you from the cuffs on the bed,” he grumbles. “I can’t believe  _ you’re  _ stupid enough to try and  _ escape.  _ You’ve just made this so much harder on yourself.”

“I wouldn’t resist so much if I knew what I was  _ here _ for.”

No one seems to have a reply to that.

Steve pipes up quietly, “Dr. Banner already told you. You’re a suspect in a case.”

“I didn’t  _ do  _ anything. I don’t know what you think I did, but I know that I didn’t do anything. I… I don’t know why I’m here.” The boy feels thick emotion well up his chest and throat, but he swallows it down hard. He can’t cry in front of these people. He can’t look weak to them. Not now.

The billionaire sighs. It’s long and harrowed, like he’s extremely tired, and Peter feels exactly the same way. “Sedate him and put him in that holding cell,” he says dismissively, before walking down the corridor and disappearing into the infirmary room he’d been in previously.

“Cell? What?” Peter echoes, weakly straining away from Black Widow.

“If you’re strong enough to escape, you’re strong enough to leave the infirmary, kid,” Black Widow informs him emotionlessly, and before Peter can even try to move, she’s pushing a needle into his shoulder blade.

As he starts to lose feeling in his limbs and his eyes start to grow heavy, he feels himself being lowered onto the floor. The last thing he registers before he caves into the welcoming arms of unconsciousness is the creased brow of Captain America and his gentle voice saying, “you’ll know soon enough.”

-

When Peter wakes up, he’s lying on the floor.

He blinks sleepily at the ceiling for a long time. He doesn’t want to get up and face reality right now. He can remember every detail that led him here right up to when he was stabbed in the neck with a needle and it makes him feel sick to the stomach. Not only did he fail to escape, but he has no doubt that whatever is happening to him is only going to get worse from here.

Lifting himself up onto his elbows, he drinks in the view. He’s in a circular cell made of glass, with the room around him being greenish-grey, dimly lit and leaning towards the downright depressing side of the scale.

He notices he’s not wearing his suit anymore, but grey sweatpants and a black t-shirt that hangs a little too big on him. It feels better to be in fresh clothes but he still can’t help but feel uncomfortable knowing they stripped him and changed his clothes while he was unconscious. At least he’s still wearing his mask - he’s got  _ that  _ much going for him, even if it probably looks a little stupid.

With dread settling in his stomach, Peter climbs to his feet. For what it’s worth he’s feeling quite a lot better - the aches previously radiating throughout his body now feel dull and the pain from his broken ribs is manageable. His hand doesn’t even hurt that much anymore. If he’d had a meal between trying to escape from the reinforced infirmary and waking up in here, the pain would have probably been eliminated entirely by now.

There’s a bottle of water sitting on a chair bolted to the ground in the middle of the cell. Despite his silent spidey-sense, the boy cautiously tastes it with his tongue before actually drinking from it. He doesn’t want to take anymore chances.

“This is getting ridiculous,” he grumbles, putting a clenched fist against the glass. “Is anybody here?”

“I am,” JARVIS pipes up, and Peter sighs.

“Can  _ you _ tell me why I’m here, JARVIS?”

“No. However, I have informed Mr. Stark that you are awake.”

Frustrated and tired of being confused, Peter hits the glass. “Great,” he mutters. “That’s just great.”

He doesn’t know how much time passes until a door slides open and Tony Stark comes strolling in with that infuriating, smug-looking smile on his face, but it feels like far too long. “Spiderman!” the billionaire declares. “You’re looking snug in there. No escaping yet, huh?”

Peter has worshipped Tony Stark and his brilliance for as long as he can remember, but he’s growing really tired of seeing his face and hearing his know-it-all voice. All he wants is to get the fuck out of here and go  _ home.  _ “Please just let me go,” he says, leaning against the glass to glare at the older man. “Whatever you think I’ve done, I didn’t do it, okay?”

“JARVIS, bring up the video.”

A hologram showing the blurry thumbnail of a video is projected just beside Tony. The billionaire has this extraordinary grin on his face that just radiates toxic arrogance, as if he thinks that he  _ knows  _ he’s right on this. It makes Peter feel tense and sweaty with nerves - what if he’d actually done something and just hadn’t known it? What if he’s the one in the wrong here and he deserves all this rough treatment?

“You look nervous,” Tony observes, “so I think you know what’s coming. I just want you to see this. J, you know what to do.”

The video plays.

As Peter watches the footage shakily arc up to show someone that looks exactly like  _ himself  _ slamming a police car with an _ officer _ inside into a wall, he feels his breath catch in his throat and his heart stop in his chest.

When the character starts to _unload a gun into the police car,_ as the officer under fire tries so desperately to scramble away to safety, his legs go numb and he stumbles backwards into the chair, his hip hitting the corner and his body landing clumsily on the floor.

When the car explodes and all he can hear is the screaming of the officer as he burns to his death inside of it and the almighty crackling of the fire, he feels the oxygen in his body slip away and his vision starts to tunnel. He lets himself fall onto his back, squeezing his eyes closed against the blinding white light above him, hand clinging onto the chair leg so hard he thinks his knuckles are going to burst through his skin. The chair leg cracks under his grip.

After what feels like hours, Peter feels his lungs start to expand properly, and while he sucks in a deep breath and starts to ground himself, he doesn’t dare open his eyes. Opening his eyes means facing what he just watched.

“You had a panic attack,” comes Tony Stark’s unsympathetic voice from outside the glass. “I didn’t know Spiderman gets those.”

Peter says nothing.

“Drink that water and then sit in that chair.”

He registers the sickening dryness in his mouth and decides to oblige.

There’s no way that could have been him. He doesn’t remember ever doing that - he knows he never would. Spiderman doesn’t hurt people. Spiderman  _ saves  _ people. Why would he hurt people? Why would he murder someone? Why does he not  _ remember? _

“Thirteen people died that day. Twenty-five people were injured.”

Peter’s heart stops.

_ Thirteen? _

_ Twenty-five? _

“I-” he tries. “I- that- that isn’t… isn’t me. That isn’t me!”

He can’t breathe. His lungs won’t expand. The air around him is too thick and it gets stuck in his throat. Something heavy is crushing his chest. Tony speaks, but it’s muffled and underwater, a dull whisper compared to the roar around him. The lights make his head hurt and all he can hear is the screaming of the electricity in the wires, the movement of people behind the walls, the blood running through his veins, the thunderous thumb of his heart behind his-

There’s a hand on his arm and he jerks away, startled, scared. “Dark Mode,” he chokes into his mask, but it doesn’t respond like it used to. For the second time, he bats away the hands that paw at his body and tries again, but he can’t get his words out.

It’s then that the lights dim. The hands grab his arms and pulls him out of the water. He’s all of a sudden staring into Tony Stark’s stern face as the older man pins his right hand against his chest. “Breathe,” he hears. “Breathe with me.”

Peter tries his best, and after what feels like days, he starts to get real feeling back in his limbs and his lungs finally feel like they can expand properly behind his battered ribcage. The weight on his chest and the twist in his stomach lightens with every deep, long breath he sucks in. The lights are bearable. He can’t hear the walls anymore.

With sickening desperation, he chugs the rest of the water from the water bottle Tony offers him. He can’t even look the man in the eye - he doesn’t think he’s ever been this humiliated in his life. “Sorry,” he mumbles, passing back the empty bottle.

“Sensory overload,” is all he replies with.

“I- uh.”

“Dark Mode is a mode in your suit that… helps you deal with that, yes?”

Peter feels like he’ll vomit if he speaks, so he just nods.

“Smart.” Tony stands up and steps away from him. “I think I’ve shown you enough for today. Having two panic attacks in the middle of my interrogation isn’t ideal and I don’t want you to die before we get any answers out of you, kid.”

“Not a kid.”

The billionaire’s tone has taken a complete 180 and it makes Peter feel… unsure. Uncertain. “Okay, Not-A-Kid. Want something to eat? You need something to eat. It’s probably been a hot minute since you’ve eaten, right?”

Peter swallows.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Any allergies?”

“Uh. No.”

“Don’t try and escape this time. You definitely won’t be able to.” Tony rubs a hand through his hair, turns on his heels, and walks right out of the door he came through.

  
  


-

  
  
  


For a minute, Tony is skimming through websites filled with information of questionable accuracy on his phone, and he eventually comes to the conclusion that what Spiderman needs is protein - but as he’s not about to bang up some steak or something, he settles on seeded bread.

As the bread toasts, he leans back against the kitchen counter and oils the turning cogs in his brain. The one thing he definitely didn’t expect is for Spiderman to melt down into not one, but  _ two  _ separate panic attacks turned sensory overloads, during his initial interrogation - and the fact that he doesn’t know what they mean is driving him insane.

They could have been caused by the realisation that he’s been caught, but Tony realised after he’d broken out of the reinforced infirmary room that Spiderman is a pretty smart guy - smart enough to know that committing these crimes in the suit he is notorious for is a very quick way for him to get identified and therefore captured.

Tony considers the other option - the panic attacks were caused by the fact that he’s getting accused for a horrible, horrible crime that he knows he didn’t commit, and he thinks he’s going to get an extreme punishment for something he never did. That one seems more probable than the other, he thinks.

The man takes the toast out, butters it while it’s still warm, and pops in another four slices. “What on Earth are we going to do with Spiderman?” he mumbles to nobody in particular under his breath.

When he comes back to the cell with the toast and another two bottles of water, Spiderman is still leaning motionlessly against the glass. The guy looks exhausted and Tony doesn’t blame him - he knows all too well how much a severe panic attack like those take out of you.

“Eat up,” he says as he slides the toast and water through the door and closes it again.

Spiderman pulls his mask up so it rests on his nose, allowing him to eat. The vigilante’s lips and chin look more child-like than Tony would like to admit. He tries not to think about that too hard. “Thanks,” he gets out around a mouthful of toast.

The man nods mutely and turns to make his departure. He’s bursting to know more; to interrogate the guy further and get this shit over and done with; but even  _ he  _ isn’t cruel enough to push it more than he already has. He’ll give it until tomorrow before he continues the dig for information.

As the door slides open, he hears a voice through the glass. “Uh- Mr. Stark, Sir?”

Tony turns around. Spiderman is watching him carefully. “Hm?”

“Do- uh. Do you think I- I could get a blanket?” Spiderman closes in on himself timidly. “I, um, spiders don’t thermoregulate and it’s kind of chilly in here.”

The billionaire blows out a breath through tight lips, unsure of what to think of that new piece of information. The guy may not deserve a blanket just yet, but he doesn’t deserve to freeze to death because of his abnormal biology - which he is definitely going to have to tell Bruce about, because what kind of friend would he be if he didn’t? - either.

“J, dial up the heat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are so lovely.
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	5. CHAPTER FOUR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't make this any longer without destroying it. :)
> 
> edit one > 08/04/20 > spelling & wording errors.

Peter Parker has always been an avid napper, but today he just cannot sleep.

Lying on the hard concrete underfoot, he supposes it’s probably because he’s so uncomfortable. For hours he’s been watching the dim lighting that stare at him from above, feeling entirely passive as he imagines he’s instead lying on a rooftop and gazing at the striking display of stars visible in the night sky when one is high enough to avoid the glare of the streetlights. That’s where he wishes he were right now. It’s where he belongs.

The cogs in his brain continue to turn.

After several hours of mulling over the information, he’s become quite numb to the accusations Tony Stark slapped him with however long ago. There is no way that the person in the video is him; he’s quite qualified to know that. Not only does he have absolutely no memory of doing anything of the sort, he can’t imagine that he would do that in a million years anyway. Spiderman doesn’t hurt people. Spiderman doesn’t kill people. Spiderman _helps_ people. Everybody knows that.

His biggest concern isn’t even the fact that he might get locked away for a crime he didn’t commit, nor is it that his reputation may be tarnished if this footage is released. It’ll probably be a breeze to convince them that he’s innocent. Whatever time and day that video was taken, there will probably be plenty of witnesses that either saw him as a civilian or as Spiderman. It’s not like his routine changes very often.

In fact, his biggest worry is that there’s a psychopath out there who is fucking _murdering_ people and they still haven’t been caught. If they’ve still got Peter in captivity, it means they haven’t captured the person who _actually_ did it yet, and that shakes him to his core. Who knows what they could be doing while he lies around in this cell, all of the blame on his shoulders?

He releases a breath, picking up an arm and staring absently at his hand. He supposes that this justifies the Avengers’ behaviour towards him, even just a little - they’ve got good enough reason to think that he’s murdered thirteen people and injured twenty-five more and they don’t want him on the streets until they figure it out. That’s fair enough. An earlier explanation would have been appreciated, but he doesn’t dwell on it.

-

Peter jerks awake.

“Let's get this over and done with,” comes Tony Stark’s voice.

Behind him is Hawkeye, Black Widow and Captain America. In any other situation where he ends up face-to-face with the Avengers, he would be absolutely starstruck in the presence of his long-time idols, but today is different. Today he is trapped behind a glass wall for a crime he did not commit. It's probably fair to be a little pissed off at his captors. He doesn’t remember how long he’s been here. When one can’t see sunlight, they tend to lose track of time pretty damn quickly.

It would be under-exaggeration to say that he is just _not_ in the mood.

“What time is it?”

Hawkeye pulls down his sleeve and looks at his watch, but Black Widow pushes his hand down again. Nobody replies, so Peter tries again with a wildly different, more confident angle. “Let me guess - you’re here to interrogate me so I’ll confess to my sins and you can put me in another glass box somewhere else for the rest of my life. Right? Did I get it right?”

Again, he is met with silence. Tony eventually says, “we just want to ask you some basic questions.”

“No drama,” the Captain says stonily. His arms are crossed over his chest as if he were a stern dad telling off his child for making a mess.

“Okay. Basic questions. No drama.” Peter feels doubtful, but he decides to roll with it. Besides, it isn’t like they’re doing anything out of place - _he_ knows he’s innocent, but _they_ don’t. This is his chance to prove that to them. Acting out would be plain stupid.

This is when Black Widow takes the lead and Peter cannot help the trickle of fear that runs ice-cold in his blood when his eyes meets her venomous gaze. Dressed in a simple black jumpsuit with her hair tied into a neat bun atop her head, she radiates the powerful energy of a force to be reckoned with. The only comfort he has is the thick panel of glass between him and her.

“What country were you in on the 14th of November?”

Peter pauses. Did he hear her right?

“Country?”

“Country.”

“... you mean to tell me that… the video you showed me happened in a whole different country? And you’re confident it’s me?” Peter questions, so genuinely puzzled at this scenario that he gains the confidence to start pointing out the gigantic flaws in their accusations. Surely, if he had disappeared to a different country, it would have come up in the media at some point or another. Spiderman vanishing from New York for even just a _day_ shows up in the local newspapers and news sites.

“Answer the question,” is all Black Widow says.

Captain America is rubbing his eyebrows anxiously behind her.

“Wait-”

“Answer the question!”

“I was in America. I was in New York. Where was the video taken?”

“Finland,” Tony pipes up. “The capital of Finland, at 3:54 PM Finnish time.”

Peter gapes. He’s in a room full of some of the smartest and most powerful people on the planet, but it definitely does not feel like it. There is definitely some fishy framing going on, and the Avengers are apparently too blinded by hatred to see it. They’re going to really kick themselves in the ass when they finally see the light about this one - and Peter can’t wait to watch.

“Surely, if I had disappeared to fucking Finland, _someone_ would have something to say about it,” Peter points out in a burst of confidence. He’s winning this one - he’s winning an interrogation from the motherfucking Avengers and he’s not going to be _shy_ about it. “I stop patrolling for a single day and I’m all over the headlines, being declared dead and shit. You think I just silently shimmied away to Finland? And no one noticed at all? I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous.”

Silence.

It is absolutely blissful.

Peter is infinitely proud of himself for this one. He just owned the fucking _Avengers._ It’s probably the most confident he’s ever been and he’s just about bathing in pure, unbridled adrenaline. He’s probably going to think about this time in fifty years and retell it to his grandchildren.

“You know,” Hawkeye says, “he _has_ got a point.”

“Not now, Barton,” the Black Widow snaps. She looks unhappy and deep in thought.

“I don’t understand,” Captain America says very genuinely. “Fury told us that he had checked everything. He seemed confident that it was Spiderman in that video. Him and his team wouldn’t have missed something as simple as checking the media for evidence of his disappearance from New York at the time the video was taken.”

“Well, they did,” Peter replies.

It’s joyfully evident that his point has struck a chord in their brains, for everyone - even Black Widow, who has got to be one of the most intimidating people that Peter has ever had the displeasure of meeting - has this sheepish sort of look on their face that makes him feel like an absolute winner. He’s going to be fine. He’ll be home by the end of the day if everything goes to plan!

For but a moment, he forgets that there’s someone out there committing horrific murders using his identity, and lives in this perfect, euphoric victory. He’s a step closer to being wrapped in the impenetrable safety of May’s warm embrace once again. He’s a step closer to laughing and joking their problems away with Ned and MJ again. He’s a step closer to going _home_ again.

Tony and the Captain make eye contact that signifies they’re having a silent conversation. After a couple of moments, Tony turns back to Peter behind the glass and says, “would you mind sitting tight? We’ve got some… _matters_ to discuss.”

“Yeah, you do.” Peter sighs and rubs his eyes with his hands. He’s so tired of this glass box. Just the thought of sitting here any longer bores him to his core, but it isn’t as if they’re giving him any options. “Would it be too much to ask for something to eat? Maybe a warm drink and a pillow while you’re at it? I’m _dying_ here.”

“You know, it actually isn’t too much to ask for at all at this point,” Clint says.

Pleasantly surprised that his out-of-the-blue burst of confidence had paid off and gotten them actually thinking for once, Peter decides it’s best to take what he can and asks him to add another bottle of water in the mix while he’s at it.

-

“JARVIS, call Fury. Tell him it is urgent,” Tony demands as soon as he rocks up into the conference room.

Hot at his heels is the rest of the team - Sam, Bucky and Bruce had been pulled out of their daily happenings to join the others in getting to the bottom of this despite the fact that their only knowledge of the new developments in the case was a brief, out-of-breath explanation from Clint as they all jogged to catch up with Tony’s angry speed-walking.

Bucky, who wears a charcoal facemask, an eggshell blue dressing gown and a face that radiates his displeasure at being dragged out of the time he values oh-so-dearly, leans over to Sam and whispers, “do you know what’s going on?”

“Not a clue, Bucks.”

“Oh.”

After two seconds, Fury picks up the call. Although the call is out of the blue, the man looks well put together as if he were expecting it. His expression is stern and questioning, as if he were any way of there being any point or topic to this call at all. _“Oh. I see all of you are here. What do you want now?”_

“Did you not check the media at all when you were looking into that video?” Tony demands with no hesitation.

A pause.

_“What?”_

“The video of Spiderman in the capital of Finland you showed us. Did you not check the media for any evidence that Spiderman was gone from New York at the time at all? Because I checked and everything was normal! Everything was just talking about the sudden power outage!”

Fury stares at Tony. _“Stark, you’re crazy. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Spiderman in Finland? Why would Spiderman be in Finland? What video are you talking about?”_

A silence so tense that one could cut it with a knife hangs in the air. No one knows what to say, because this isn’t what at all they expected to be faced with when they called Fury. They thought they’d see frustration, maybe anger - not genuine and outright _cluelessness._

Eventually, Steve encourages further elaboration by saying, “you called us a couple of days ago asking us to detain Spiderman…?”

_“No, I didn’t. Since when does Spiderman need detaining? All he does is walk old ladies across the street and hang muggers upside down from storm drains. And why was he in Finland, again?”_

The aforementioned silence remains.

“You haven’t seen the video?” Steve tries.

_“No.”_

“What the fuck,” Clint mutters.

Natasha pinches the bridge of her nose. “The footage shows Spiderman _killing_ people, Fury. You said you managed to snag the footage before it reached world news. You told us to detain Spiderman and interrogate a confession out of him. You have no memory of this at all?”

_“No. What- only once piece of footage? If this bullshit actually happened, there’s no way we could keep it off the media. We’re good, but we’re not perfect.”_

“This is mad freaky,” Sam declares, holding his head in his hands as if he’s sure he’s losing his mind. “Anyone else think this is freaky? Because this is definitely _freaky,_ y’all.”

“And you’re 100% certain?”

_“100%. You think I’m the kind to forget shit like that, Rogers?”_ The older man sighs, and rubs his forehead. _“I don’t have time for this. I’ll get a team of my own onto this, but for now, try and fucking figure this out. I can’t have someone going around impersonating me so well that even you dumbasses are fooled.”_

Tony smoothes down his shirt. “This was _not_ a twist I expected today.”

“Of course, Sir,” Steve says, sensing the shift in conversation and standing up respectfully. They've definitely got a lot to get done - and their first stop is updating poor Spiderman on the situation. “We’ll get down to the bottom of this. This could be really serious.”

_“No shit. And for the love of God, make sure you let Spiderman go!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know what i'm doing, i promise.
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	6. CHAPTER FIVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how's quarantine treating everybody?

Spiderman stares at them, cross-armed, through the glass.

“Look,” Steve says. “On everybody’s behalf… we’re really sorry.”

“Yeah, you better be.”

Leaning over to open the door to the glass cell, Tony gripes, “quit it with the snark, kid.”

“Not a kid.”

Natasha looks him up and down but ultimately remains silent.

“I think we can give him a bit of snark at this point, Stark,” Clint points out comically. 

As Spiderman is standing up to leave, he stretches his arms and back, the satisfying pop of tension and knots leaving bones and muscles echoing throughout the room and making Clint cringe. The mask conceals his facial expressions, but Tony can see the relief flowing through his veins by the skip he’s developed in his step and the way he swings his arms in a manner that is so carefree and refreshingly relaxed.

He strolls through the group of Avengers standing awkwardly on the footpath leading from the cell to the door, but Natasha takes a hold of his shoulder and stops him mid-stride. “I need to ask you some questions before you leave,” she tells him. “Barton, grab me that chair.”

Tony glances at Steve with a cocked left eyebrow as the marksman obliges, but he isn’t concerned about whatever Natasha is about to do. They’ve been living and working together long enough for Tony to trust her to do what she needs to do.

Spiderman sits down on the chair placed in front of him backwards without much hesitation. He twiddles his thumbs in his lap and his leg shakes against the floor; Tony can identify a bout of anxiety from a mile away. The way the kid’s breathing becomes slow and deep in the gut tells him that he’s trying to ease his flipping stomach right about now. Who can blame him? Black Widow is many things, but someone to be messed with is not one of them.

“Do you have any enemies?”

The vigilante stares at her.

And then he  _ starts to laugh. _

“Do I have any enemies?” he echoes, slapping his knee. “What kind of a question is that? Of course I do! Do you even know what I do? I’ve probably got hundreds of muggers plotting revenge on me at this very moment, not to mention all the jazzed-up dudes with superpowers who’d rather see me dead.”

Arms folded, Clint leans back and warmly whispers to Tony, “I like this kid.”

Tony regards Spiderman carefully. Even under the venomous stare of Black Widow, he has this particular energy to him that communicates a manner boisterous enough to warm even the iciest of hearts. It’s clear to Tony by the way he behaves and speaks that he’s extremely capable and intelligent to the core; traits that he didn’t really expect in the vigilante, but it doesn’t provoke surprise in him either.

The billionaire’s eyes sweep over the boy. Despite the fact that he’s clearly built from years of carrying his own body weight on webs and tangling with bad guys on a day to day basis, he’s still far skinnier than what is probably healthy. There are old welts and cuts scattered across his arms and his knuckles are nearly more scar tissue than normal skin. That suit he wears hardly seems very protective if  _ this _ is how he comes out of scraps. Maybe Tony will make him a better one to make up for how they’ve treated him. Who knows?

Now that they’re pretty certain Spiderman  _ didn’t _ murder several innocent Finnish citizens, Tony wonders how they ever thought he did in the first place. A twinge of guilt strikes his heart as he mulls over what they put the kid through because of their own carelessness.

The agent puts her hands on the back of the chair and leans down so she’s nose-and-nose with Spiderman. “This is not a laughing matter,” she informs him dangerously. “You need to tell us, right now, if you have any enemies who are capable of imitating other human beings.”

Sobering up, Spiderman levels with Natasha’s eyeline. “I know a couple guys,” he tells her, sounding entirely sincere, “but I need to know more about...  _ whatever _ this is before I can give you a definite answer.”

With a shrug, Tony glances over at Steve, who shrugs back at him. “That’s doable,” the billionaire tells him.

As Natasha is placing the chair back into the middle of the empty glass cell, Tony uses the control touchpad to call over a team of cleaners to tidy up the place. “Come up to the conference room with us and we can talk about this,” Steve encourages the younger boy. “It would be nice to have some headway on this. I think it’s got all of us scratching our heads.”

“Just- just for the record; I may be helping you, but this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.” Spiderman addresses the group with his arms crossed. Even while wearing the mask, Tony can identify an unhappy individual when he sees one.

It makes sense - Tony figures that this aversion is normal, what with how badly they had treated him. If he understood basic human emotion more, he’d probably try to apologise properly. He decides to leave it to the other guys for the time being.

“Sorry again,” Clint murmurs, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck.

Spiderman regards the marksman carefully, before turning to Natasha. “Before we do this, can I go do something? And also go pee? I haven’t peed for a while. It’s like a kid filling up a water balloon with way too much water down here.”

“TMI,” Steve comments passively.

“Sorry.”

-

The stairs up to his apartment level are wonky and uneven from years of dodgy, badly-done repairs, meaning they’re incredibly uncomfortable to climb, especially at high speeds; but today Peter Parker ignores the burning in his legs and lets himself trip over on the step that’s an inch too high because all he can think about is being enveloped in the warm, safe arms of his Aunt May once again.

The past few days have been a mess of anxiety and hurt and panic but it’s all forgotten now it’s over. He doesn’t care that the Avengers did treat him somewhat badly. He doesn’t care that his suit, excluding his mask, was basically destroyed and will take months to repair. He doesn’t care that someone who probably hates him tried to destroy his reputation and get him off the streets. All he cares about now is going  _ home. _

He basically collapses through the unlocked door of his apartment, his chest heaving with adrenaline. Just the sight of the peeling, wallpaper, the stained carpet and the moth-eaten furniture floods him with a relief that feels warm in his veins.

And then, brandishing a bat above her head, his Aunt charges into the room.

“Pe… Peter?”

He sticks to her like a bug.

The bat falls to the ground. 

The moment that his Aunt’s warm arms envelope around his body, he’s overwhelmed with relief and happiness as if it were a drug that had just kicked in. There isn’t any point in attempting to barricade the floodgates - he just allows himself to sob into May’s shoulder. They cling to each other as if they would lose each other if they let go again.

“I worried for you,” she whispers into his hair. She’s never been a loud cryer, but Peter can tell she’s in tears too. “I prayed for you before I slept and when I woke up again. But you’re so strong and dependant, baby, that I knew you’d come back to me.”

“I’m here now,” he says, grabbing her quivering hands and looking into her eyes.

Her face crumples into tears again and she pulls his head into a hug once more.

May has always struggled to be away from Peter for long - she’s lost so much thanks to the cruel world around them that being away from her boy longer than she has to terrifies her to the core (he doesn’t even  _ want _ to think about what it will be like when it comes to the moving out stage. Maybe he’ll look after May until she’s gone and he’ll live in their apartment until he dies, too). 

Sure, it isn’t as if he’d been missing for months, but the boy can’t imagine how much these past few days had wrecked his beautiful Aunt. Not only did she have to face being alone, but she didn’t know where Peter was or whether he was hurting or whether he’d ever come back to her. He never wants to leave her alone again. He can’t handle doing that to her any more than he already has.

Eventually, their hug comes to an end and Peter sits May down on their ragged couch. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks her, allowing her to cling to his fingers.

She smiles at him, still teary-eyed and red in the cheeks. “Oh, Pete, I’m better than okay. I’m so much better than okay right now. I’m so happy you’re safe. I was scared. You know how much being away from you when I don’t know…  _ where _ you are, makes me anxious.”

“I know, May, I know. I won’t ever do that again.”

Gently, she runs her fingers over the scar tissue on his hands and arms, watching her hands move along his damaged skin. Peter knows exactly what she’s doing - she’s searching for something new. “May,” he murmurs.

Her hands sweep over his shoulder and collarbone.

“May,” he tries again, intertwining his fingers with her own so as to catch her attention. “May, I’m okay. I wasn’t hurt. I promise I’m okay.”

“Do… do you want to tell me about it?”

At this, Peter feels his heart skip a beat. He’s used to telling his Aunt about his day and venting away his frustrations; May has been her rock for as long as he’s been alive and she always will be. It comforts her to know what he’s up to during the day and it comforts him to know he’s always got a shoulder to lean on who tries to understand.

Of course, he tends to leave out a lot of the goriest stuff. She doesn’t know about the time he was shot twice - once in the thigh and once in the stomach - and was fortunately found by a couple of good-natured men who helpfully tried to put pressure on the bleeding as they drove him to Ned’s house to get patched up.

She doesn’t know about the time he was held at gunpoint by an escaped convict who wrapped an old piece of wire around his throat and would have choked him to unconsciousness if a policeman hadn’t shot the perp in the knee and sent him sprawling across the ground to be arrested.

May Parker has been a long-time sufferer of anxiety, and Peter knows that telling her the true story of every single new scar on his body would send her spiralling. Despite the fact that he has no new scar to present, it remains the same for now. Maybe that will change in the near future, but he can’t do that to her. Not right now.

Peter nestles into his Aunt’s side. The welcoming scent of cheap coconut shampoo and cinnamon is heaven to his nostrils. “Can we just… sit, for a bit?” he murmurs into the soft material of her shirt. “Please?”

“Of course, baby. Of course.”

They stay like that for a long time.

A really, really long time.

-

A couple of hours later, Peter is practically hammering down Ned’s front door brandishing two hot pizzas, a side of warm, melt-in-your-mouth cookies and a plastic bag of soda cans.

He’d caught the delivery boy just as he was heading for the door, offered to take it in for him since he was planning to enter the house and shoved him a five-dollar tip before waving him away. There is no car parked out in the driveway and the garage is open and empty, meaning that Ned’s parents are not currently at home but Ned himself is.

“That better be my pizza,” he hears Ned grumble as he unlocks it and swings it open. “Hi, here’s your- what the fuck, Parker!”

Peter grins at him. “Hey, beautiful.”

If it hadn’t been for his sticky fingers, he would have dropped all of the food and soda cans when Ned practically picked him up off the ground in a humongous bear-hug. Relief floods out of the both of them in the form of boyish laughter. Peter can hardly see through the tears brimming his eyes, but he can tell that Ned is crying, too. “I was scared that you died,” Ned manages out, barely coherent and still laughing.

“You should know better than that,” Peter replies around his smile. “Can you put me down now?”

“Ope.” Ned places him carefully on the floor before taking the delivery products off him and holding the front door open for him with his foot.

The smaller boy closes it behind him. The Leeds family had a very sizable, extremely well-decorated and three-story (they like to call the small attic a third floor because it makes the building appear much more expensive than it actually is) house compared to Peter and May’s cramped apartment. He realises this every time he walks in, as he gazes at the tall ceilings and flawless white wall paint and polished hardwood floors, and wonders why they never really hang out here.

Ned always tells Peter that he prefers his apartment because it feels like a home and not just a beautiful house created to impress guests on the rare occasion that they enter the threshold. It brings Peter to remember that, despite the fact that he always trips on the wonky floorboards and they only get a strong phone reception when they sit on the toilet, he’s incredibly lucky to have his on-the-brink-of-collapse, tiny apartment.

“Don’t worry, I tipped the pizza guy,” Peter tells his best friend as he follows him into the spacious living room to help him set up all of the food on the coffee table. “Five dollars. I was feeling generous.”

“Dude, what you tipped the pizza dude is the  _ last _ thing I care about.”

Peter grins. “That’s how it’s gonna be, huh?”

“I need to know, Pete!” Ned urges, taking a hold of his shoulders. “I need to know what happened! Where you were! When did you get back? Have you seen May yet? You _ know _ I was going to ask this. Don’t look so surprised.”

Of course he knew he was going to ask questions - Ned has always been one to act on his natural and somewhat obnoxious curiosity. “I’m really tired,” Peter tries. “Can’t we just… eat pizza and watch terrible daytime TV?”

Ned eyes him up and down. “Fine,” he gripes. “But you’re telling me before the end of the week.”

“But-”

The taller boy, picking up a slice of pizza slick with yellow grease, swoops an arm over the shoulders of his best friend and pulls him closer into his side. “Shut your mouth, drink a damn soda and put on reruns of Design on a Dime.”

Obediently, Peter sits back into the welcome envelope of body heat. The sun breaks through the large windows at the head of the living space, casting a pool of gold emblazoned with the dapples of raindrops on the glass across the mahogany floors and up the white walls. Shadows of the trees waving outside dance across the room.

There’s a smile on his face. He hardly even realises. This is where he’s supposed to be, he thinks to himself. 

This is how it’s supposed to be.

-

It’s dark outside.

_ I’m on the roof,  _ the text lighting up Peter’s phone reads.

The boy touches down noiselessly on the cool concrete. The portable campfire sitting between his and May’s deckchairs crackles, hot-red sparks and smoke billowing out of the netting cage sat over the flame and disappearing into the vast velvet sky above them.

“MJ,” he says. 

The girl turns around to look at him and her face lifts with a cool, collected smile that lights up her eyes. She’s never been much of a hugger, but the fistbump they share is everything they need and more. 

“You didn’t die,” she observes helpfully.

“I wasn’t gone for that long, you know,” Peter points out.

“So what happened?”

Peter stares at the crackling embers in front of him. The icy wind guides the smoke into his eyes but he doesn’t think to move them. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he murmurs. “I’d rather sit here and blink smoke into my eyes until I go blind.”

Ever the talkative character, MJ says nothing. She, too, stares at the fire.

“I’m okay, though,” he continues. The question was hanging in the air - he may as well get it over and done with. “Before you ask. No horrible PTSD or life-threatening injuries just yet. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

“We all worry about you, Pete.”

The stars blink at him. “I know.”

“Ned’s mom invited me and May to her house for dinner,” she tells him, shoving her hands deep into her jacket pockets. “May was quiet the whole evening, but she was happy when we were talking about you. I never realised just how much she loves you before now. She really believes in you.”

Peter smiles. “Yeah.”

A punch lands on his arm and he curses. “So you better not worry her like that again. You better not worry any of us like that again. Next time, you tell us where you are. It isn’t a request. That’s an order, Parker.”

“Ow. Alright, alright,” he grumbles, rubbing at his new bruise. “I’m sorry, okay? I really didn’t mean to.”

MJ grins at him. “Good.”

They sit on the deck chairs and watch the stars until the horizon turns to gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smile
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)   
>  [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	7. CHAPTER SIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to my friend marco who's been keeping my spirits up lately. love you buddy.

The next time Peter Parker enters the Avenger’s Tower, it’s actually by his own decision rather than under the circumstance of a surprise kidnapping scenario.

Clad in the old suit - the one made from old clothes and goggles sewn together rather than the sleek, skin-tight design that was unfortunately destroyed the first time he was at this Tower - he crawled up the face of the building and entered through the window he’d smashed in the midst of his escape attempt. It had yet to be repaired; the only thing that had changed is that they had placed barricades in front of the hole, removed the broken shards left in the frame and swept up all of the glass on the ground.

Although he no longer had the technological advancements he’d put into the previous suit, he was still capable of using his goggles to zoom in and out - he supposes it’s better than nothing. At least he had his webshooters, freshly-repaired and repainted just for the Hell of it. He feels naked without them.

“Greetings, Spiderman,” JARVIS says warmly. “Sir is waiting for you in conference room B3.”

“Cool,” Peter says, pretending he knows where that is.

He idles in place for another five seconds.

“Head for the elevator, Spiderman.”

“Right. Right, sorry.”

Before he steps out of the elevator, the AI informs him of the directions that would get him to the conference room in question. Even just the corridor he walks up is sleek and shiny - not a speck of dirt in sight - and Peter suddenly becomes hyper-aware of how much filth is on the bottom of his shoes. He can feel the eyes of Tony Stark burning a hole through his suit’s cheap material as he passes the glass walls to knock on the conference room door.

“Come in,” comes the billionaire’s voice.

Peter says nothing; just waves and idles at the head of the conference table.

There is no one else in the room with them; just him and Tony Stark, who’s sitting comfortably at the table with a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. The man dons a graphic tee, a black blazer and a pair of sunglasses with an orange tint, behind which he looks Peter up and down before saying, “what the fuck is that?”

“What?” Peter looks down at himself.

“The pyjamas. What’s up with that?”

“You ripped my other suit in half,” Peter points out. “I don’t exactly have spares lying around.”

At this, the older man actually pauses to think. “Okay, that’s actually a good excuse,” he says eventually. He then gestures to the empty seat that Peter hovers awkwardly behind. “You can sit down, you know.”

“Where’s… the others?” Peter asks, obliging.

“Don’t know.” Tony throws back a mouthful of hot coffee. “Tell me. How do the… web things work?”

“I thought I was here to-”   
  


“That’s Nat’s job. Seeing as she isn’t here yet, I might as well make some small talk before we start.” The billionaire wears a cool, confident smile, his hand behind his head as he regards Peter through his sunglasses. “The web thingies. How do they work?”

A twinge of anxiety twists his stomach. Sitting in a room full of so much advanced and expensive technology really does make the webshooters seem like they belong in the caveman era in comparison. “You mean my webshooters?” he says, unlatching the left one from his wrist so he can open it. “Uh, here, I’ll open it so you can see.”

Tony moves seats so he’s sitting closer to Peter. The presence of someone he used to idolise so much - he isn’t so sure anymore - sitting so close to him really does dial up his nerves. Not to mention the fact that he’s a man who sets the pace in global technological advancements who is about to watch Peter open something he made at his bedroom desk from dumpster-diving and pulling parts from his old computer.

“The web fluid sits in the, uh, annealed brass tubing back here,” Peter starts, pointing out all of the relevant parts in the inner workings. “There’s the teflon turbine and the turbine pump vanes. The trigger is on the end of this spring steel which sits in my palm. And there, uh, is the spinneret nozzle. That’s where the wes come out of.” He bits his lip. “Uhhh. There’s more but… sorry, I’ve never had to explain this to, uh, anybody before.”

The older man takes it upon himself to poke around inside of the webshooter. “This is good stuff,” he says, his fingertip running over the central spinneret hole and bearing mount. “Really smart stuff. The parts are kind of mismatched but it works together. Press the trigger on the one you’re still wearing.”

Peter directs his arm towards the farthest wall, presses the trigger with his two middle fingers and fires a thick strand of webbing. It clings to the wall perfectly. Still holding the web straight, he gets out of his chair, unattaches the web from where it’s coming out of the webshooter and sticks it to the opposite wall. 

Tony pings at the strand like it’s a guitar string. “What’s this?”

“Uh, webbing?”

“No, what is it made of?”

“Nothing thrilling,” Peter murmurs. “Chemistry.”

Thankfully, the billionaire doesn’t ask for elaboration; just keeps on pinching at the webs. “I always thought this came out of you,” he says comically.

Peter thinks back to the period time where Ned, too, thought that the web fluid was produced by his own body. “Oh, gross. No way.”

“You made all of this yourself?”

“All of it.”

Tony nods thoughtfully. He opens his mouth, but doesn’t get anything out, for the door behind Peter opens and a vaguely familiar male voice declares, “I don’t know what this is and I’m not sure I want to.”

Peter turns around. Black Widow and Hawkeye have entered the conference room and sat themselves down at the table. While the Black Widow wears the sleek uniform she’d been wearing the day of his release, Hawkeye is considerably more dressed down in his sweatpants, tank top and muddied white trainers. He offers Peter a friendly smile which is returned with a head nod.

“Spiderman here was just showing me how his webs work,” Tony informs them, as Peter gets to work pulling the strand of web fluid from the wall and tossing it into the bin tucked into the corner of the room. He puts the bronze cap back onto the webshooter before returning it to his wrist.

“I always thought they came out of him,” Hawkeye comments, eyeing the shooters.

“Gross,” Peter remarks again.

“I didn’t realise the Spider-kid wore pyjamas to work.” Black Widow looks at his outfit up and down. Despite her words, she doesn’t look judgemental; just curious.

“It’s all I had!”

He takes his seat again and Tony moves back to where he’d been sitting previously. Sitting in this expensive conference room with some of the most powerful people on the planet, it would be lying if Peter were to say he doesn’t feel like he’s butt-naked in the wilderness right now. There’s nothing about this situation that feels comforting to him. He twiddles his thumbs nervously in his lap.

“You mentioned you had a couple of enemies capable of imitating other people,” Black Widow says, all of a sudden serious. “Not too long ago, we had a live conversation with Nick Fury - head of SHIELD - which is the conversation that turned us onto you.”

“Sorry again,” Hawkeye pipes in.

Black Widow continues without regarding the sharpshooter. “None of us, including JARVIS, knew that there was something wrong with this until we called him a day or two later and he appeared to have no recollection of the previous conversation.”

“JARVIS, pull up the first video call,” Tony orders into the air. “And, uhh-” he glances to Peter, “skip the footage of the Helsinki attack.”

“Certainly.”

Immediately, a hologram appears at the other end of the table, the video thumbnail showing an idle shot of Nick Fury looking at the camera. There’s nothing noticeably wrong with the footage as it rolls, other than the fact that it feels odd to be watching one side of a clearly two-sided conversation.

_ “SHIELD took over the case as soon as we saw this footage. We managed to keep it down before it became world news - the last thing we need is public panic,”  _ the recording of Fury says.

That’s when Peter asks JARVIS to pause the footage. “I can’t believe you didn’t question that part,” he comments, rubbing at his eyebrow. “I thought it was weird that I never heard of this happening, especially as it happened three weeks before you were told about this.”

“We get it,” Tony says, “we were stupid.”

Feeling no need to watch anymore of it, Peter sits back in his chair to think about it deeply. Whoever did this has to be capable of creating a scenario so believable that it could fool not only the head of SHIELD himself but also the Avengers, so he thinks it’s safe to rule out all of the low-level idiots that he put into prison a long time ago.

No matter how long he mulls over names and faces, one in particular sticks out to him; one that strikes dread through the very center of his heart. Unfortunately for him, the longer he thinks about it, the more it makes sense; he’s capable, intelligent, he has the right technology and he hates Spiderman to the fucking core.

Peter exhales. “Mysterio.”

“Mysterio?” Tony echoes.

“I know of him,” Black Widow says, then. “He toured around European countries creating monsters only to destroy them himself so as to look like a hero. It worked, for a bit, until he was successfully thwarted and put behind bars all the way in London.” She looks up at him. “By a certain Spider.”

Hawkeye nods. “Ohhhh.  _ That _ guy.”

“Yeah.” Peter rubs his temples, trying hard not to think about what he endured under the fists of that sick man. “That guy.”

The events of those few weeks had left Peter shaken months after he’d come back to New York. It took him a long time to stop seeing Mysterio standing in dark corridors, a gun pointing at the spot between his eyes; to stop seeing that sickening orb of a helmet, golden suit and billowing red cape in his nightmares. Waking up screaming and crying became a daily occurrence. It worried his Aunt to her bones.

Life started to feel easier after those first few months, though. Waking up to his alarm began to occur more often than with a gun to his temple. Sometimes he thinks he sees Mysterio standing in the dark corners of his apartment, but he thinks about the fact that he had  _ already won _ and suddenly he doesn’t seem so scary anymore.

Peter shudders. He won once, so he’ll win again.

Right?

It’s then that Tony stands up, running the tips of his fingers up and down his forearms; a nervous habit, Peter observes. “Mysterio,” he begins, “is definitely someone I am familiar with. He used to be an employee of Stark Industries. In fact, the only reason he could do what he did was by... stealing Stark Industries technology.”

“You didn’t think to share this knowledge?” Black Widow demands. “You could have stopped him remotely and you left it up to some… some  _ kid  _ to take him down for you?”

Peter huffs. “Ouch.”

“You don’t understand. I tried. I really did try.” Tony actually looks guilty, now. “I tried for days, but the man is incredibly smart. He had stolen the controls - an AI identity separate to JARVIS put into a pair of sunglasses - and essentially hijacked the technology. He’d thought of everything and covered his tracks while he was at it. I couldn’t get to him.”

There’s no response to that.

Eventually, Hawkeye says, “and you think the technology he stole had the capability to create that video?”

“Of course it did. I made it.”

At the demonstration of classic Stark self-confidence, Black Widow rolls her eyes. “Do you at least have a name for us?”

Peter clasps his fingers together. “Quentin Beck,” he supplies. “His name is Quentin Beck, and he really, _ really _ wants to kill me.”

-

It’s a little while later when Clint and Natasha bid them goodbye under the guise of needing a private space to call Fury and update him on what they theorise so far, leaving Tony alone in the conference room with Spiderman.

The kid looks considerably more nervous compared to the cool, confident nature he generally radiates. Gloved fingers drum anxiously on the surface of the table; eyes hidden behind a cheap mask gaze out of the window for anything to serve as a distraction. He’s panicking - Tony knows the signs all too well.

“Spiderman.”

“Hm?”

“Mysterio really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

At this, the vigilante looks directly into Tony’s eyes. He says nothing.

“I can see it in your body language. The thought that there’s a possibility that he’s back is making you scared. The Spiderman that  _ I’ve _ seen leaving his webs around doesn’t get scared by much,” Tony continues willfully, all-too-aware that he’s stepping into sensitive territory. “You took him down on your own once, right? Who’s to say you can’t do it again?”

Spiderman runs a hand over the back of his head, glancing out of the window once more, at the spots of rain that patter gently across the glass. The evening has become grey; above the skyscrapers that tower over the bustling inner city, a colourless sky, thick clouds and a cold breeze have rolled in. Automatically, the overhead lights come to life.

Using his orange-tinted sunglasses to tuck his hair away from his forehead, Tony opens his mouth to start talking again, but Spiderman speaks first. “Mysterio was really, really hard on me,” he tells Tony. “I… didn’t recover for months. I saw him in my apartment. I saw him in my nightmares. And the fact that I’m okay again - just as I finally started to get over it - and I might have to deal with him again…?”

The rest goes unspoken. Tony understands now.

“You’ve beaten him on your own,” the billionaire says, “and this time, you’ve got the fucking  _ Avengers _ behind your back.”

Spiderman looks back at Tony, head cocked to the left like a puzzled puppy.

“What is it?” Tony continues. “You didn’t think we’d be helping you here?”

There’s no reply, but the silence speaks for itself.

“I mean, it’s the least we can do. After we... falsely imprisoned you and all.”

At this, Spiderman actually laughs. It’s a warm and genuine sound. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It  _ is  _ the least you can do.” The vigilante stands up, adjusting his shoelaces and pulling his gloves taut underneath the webshooters. “You think you can use your fancy-shmancy armour-making workshop to make me a new suit, too? Y’know, because you falsely imprisoned me and all.”

There’s the Spiderman that Tony recognises - a comical, confident character. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I can do that for you. You better tell me what you want exactly. I’m told I go a bit over the top when I’m left to my own devices.”

“Yeah. I think I can see that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments make me feel fucking fantastic. go crazy?
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)   
>  [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


	8. CHAPTER SEVEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cool life update; i go by they/them pronouns for now. i'm a work in progress. :)

“Can we make a deal?” Spiderman asks Tony as they step into the elevator together.

The billionaire tilts his head to the left thoughtfully. He supposes that, after everything they’ve done to him, he owes the kid a chance to strike a deal. “That depends. What are the terms of this... deal?”

“I help you,” the kid begins, “and the mask stays on.”

“Hold on. Have we not established that this guy is after _you?_ This is to help _you,_ kid.”

“Not a kid.”

Tony cocks his left eyebrow at Spiderman.

“Please,” the vigilante presses on.

There’s a silence in which Spiderman starts to shift uncomfortably. Eventually, Tony tries to tell him, “you _really_ want to hide your identity from us? Some of the only people in the world who know how to keep a secret?”

“With all due respect, you told everybody _your_ identity as soon as you could.”

Tony scratches his eyebrow. The kid has a point. “Okay. Yeah. You got me with that one.”

Saying nothing, Spiderman continues to stare at him.

“You won’t tell us, even though it could _really_ help us?”

“If it comes to the stage where you really, _really_ need to know, I’ll take it off, okay?”

Tony’s shoulders sag in defeat. “Fine. Deal. The mask will stay on.”

It’s as if the world’s weight had just been lifted off the Spider’s back. He gives the older man an appreciative thumbs-up. “Thank you,” he breathes out, relief flowing out of him like a waterfall spewing over a cliffside, “you have _no_ idea how much this means to me."

The elevator doors open; it’s Tony’s floor. “Come over soon, kid,” he says as he steps out, the doors beginning to close steadily behind him. “We have a suit to make.”

“Not a kid!”

-

Tony finishes the suit by the end of the weekend.

It’s a clear Sunday evening when Spiderman moonwalks out of the workshop bathroom (the bathrooms being the only places in the Tower without any video surveillance), clad in the brand spanking new suit. The kid’s face is masked, but Tony can sense the enthusiasm radiating off his body nonetheless.

“First of all,” he begins dramatically, “this has got to be the comfiest suit I’ve ever worn.”

Its design is basically identical to his previous suit - with the classic red and blue patterns comes sleek black accents, with brand new webshooters to boot. This is definitely the Spiderman that Tony remembers; that pathetic excuse of a suit he’d been wearing the last time he was at the Tower really was just tragic to look at.

Tony had wanted to put an AI in there, too, but Spiderman had rejected the idea under the guise that he wanted to minimise chances of being ‘spied on’. Something else that Tony had noticed while they’d been working is that Spiderman constantly checked the technology inside of the mask and the suit. 

Upon being questioned, Spiderman had simply told him that he was ‘just checking’ and didn’t seem interested in elaborating. Tony pins it down to the fact that they’re not exactly at the point where he’s considered a trusted character yet - he probably wants to make sure that Tony definitely isn’t spying or sneaking around behind his back.

Although it came off as paranoia, it serves as yet another demonstration that underneath that mask is a person of intelligence and initiative - Tony hates to admit it, but he’s starting to like this kid more and more.

The sleek eyepieces quizzically zoom in and out. Then, for a good minute and a half, he seems to simply stare off into space. “I’ve never had cool holograms like this,” he tells Tony eventually. “I mean, I had holograms, but they were super basic. I’ve never had ones that are as cool as this.”

“You’re welcome,” Tony says cooly. 

He leans against the counter, arms crossed, watching as Spiderman stretches and flexes to test the limitations of the tight suit design. The kid, having appeared tense and uncertain of Tony’s actions initially, now seems considerably more relaxed and in the spirit - he’s never going to admit it out loud, but he’s glad to see the kid isn’t so down in the dumps anymore.

Although the Spider has loosened up, Tony recognises apprehension. Any questions that stray towards personal information are hurriedly redirected to a different topic. Despite the fact that Spiderman is not _completely_ averted to contact, if Tony tries to touch any part of his body with no warning, he’ll startle away as if reacting on instinct. It stings Tony just a little more than he’d like to admit.

It’s painfully evident that Spiderman is young; Tony reckons he’s definitely under eighteen what with his youthful stature. With that in mind, it’s definitely disturbing to see him so weathered; so shackled down by the pains and aches that someone who’s lived an entire lifetime would see rather than by someone who’s barely started puberty.

“Kid, test the webshooters.”

“Not a kid,” Spiderman says, but whips out an arm and snatches the half-empty, lukewarm coffee mug from the surface behind Tony anyway. In a rush of adrenaline he whoops and throws the mug somewhere behind him.

“Why the fuck did you do that?”

“I don’t know!”

Tony shakes his head disdainfully.

The Spider says nothing to elaborate on this matter. Instead, he wordlessly puts his hands onto the floor and effortlessly levies himself into a handstand. Then, with a spectacular amount of grace, he pushes his body into a backflip and lands almost perfectly on his feet.

Tony regards this ordeal, fascinated. It’s common knowledge that the vigilante is flexible and vigorous - it’s probably one of his most noticeable characteristics, actually - but seeing it up close and personal is impressive nonetheless. “Were you always this… athletic?” he decides to ask; a shot in the dark.

“Yeah, I guess,” is the response he gets.

The billionaire pushes for elaboration. “So… you were born like this?”

“Like what?”

“... enhanced.”

What with how the question is becoming personal, Tony isn’t surprised when Spiderman shrugs stiffly and begins to dance around the subject. “Ehh,” is all he receives.

“Insane flexibility, superhuman strength, super-metabolism, the ability to stick to walls,” Tony starts to list; an attempt to shift the conversation in a direction that the kid might engage in more. “You know, I always thought that was just the suit that let you do that. Is it only your feet and hands?”

Rather jarringly, Spiderman walks up the wall and nonchalantly sits down, cross-legged, on the ceiling. “I can sit and lie down on any surface, so I guess not,” he replies.

Tony tilts his head. “Well. Would you look at that.”

He learns more and more about this guy every day.

-

Peter leaves the Tower through a window.

It’s that time in the evening where the sunset is beginning to bleed into the vast stretch of velvet blue sky as it darkens above their heads. Behind the silhouetted city skyline is a cocktail of colour; reds, oranges and pinks blending into one another, the sun hot and large as it begins to dip into the horizon.

Instead of heading straight home, Peter touches down on a rooftop somewhere around the halfway point between his rundown apartment complex and the Avenger’s Tower. It’s been a while since he’s taken the time to simply sit back and drink in the sunset.

_I’ll be home soon,_ he texts May before he places his phone onto the rooftop beside him. Ever since the whole surprise kidnapping incident, he’s more careful to update her on his comings and goings than he’s ever been.

With the cold breeze caressing his skin and a painting of a view in front of him, it’s only natural that Peter’s mind begins to wander. He thinks about the events of the past couple days; about how he’s wearing a suit that Tony Stark himself has created for him; about how not too long ago he was wishing he was as far away from the Avengers as he possibly could be and now he’s _teaming up with them._

It’s all becoming just so _overwhelming_ \- he realises now that he hasn’t had time to come to terms with the fact that Mysterio might be back to haunt him all over again.

It’s a terrifying thought. The idea of Mysterio standing over him with a gun to his temple sends shivers down his spine; has dread pooling in the pit of his stomach. The very memory of all of those mindfucks that Mysterio threw at him back in Europe is all it takes to get anger and fear flowing through is veins as if it were his own blood.

Mysterio was a nightmare that he thought he had overcome, but he’s never been that lucky.

Slowly, Peter puts his mask above his nose and lies on his back.

Inhale.

Exhale.

The air is icy in his throat. Car horns wail angrily at each other in the midst of an altercation somewhere in the street below him. The stars are just starting to peek through the gradually-darkening evening sky. They blink down at him and Peter blinks back at them.

It’s then that he feels it; his spidey-sense.

Almost immediately he’s on his feet, poised to jump out of the way as he checks his surroundings, fingers already brushing against the trigger of his webshooters. 

He catches it watching him from the rooftop across the street. The stark-white drone is made up of three sections, the two outer segments decorated with two glowing blue slits that stare him down dangerously. It hovers motionlessly about two meters above the rooftop and makes no move to attack him. In fact, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to move anytime soon at all.

The moment that Peter recognises the drone, a jolt of fear rushes his system and he jumps onto the side of the building in an instantaneous attempt to hide himself. That is definitely one of Mysterio’s drones; the ones he stole from Stark Industries; the ones he used to deceive and attack not only much of Europe’s capital cities but Peter himself.

His breathing is ragged but he isn’t panicking yet. No, he needs to be smart about this; that drone may well lead him to Mysterio. He doesn’t want to have to follow it, so he decides that his next best option would be to grab and disable it before it can leave.

Moving steadily, Peter crawls to the very edge of the building. There are a couple people on the street gleefully calling for his attention but he ignores them in favour of watching the drone as it continues to hover. This might be the only thing that gives him a chance to get the jump on Mysterio; the last thing he wants to do is lose track of it.

“Spiderman!” someone is calling. “Spiderman, do a backflip!”

Peter looks down at the young girl who jumps excitedly at him on the street. It feels terrible to ignore someone so adorable and innocent (especially with her menacing father staring at him expectantly like he is) and so he stands upright on the wall and lands a perfect backflip to which she squeals and giggles.

“Stop getting distracted,” he whispers to himself, crouching down again. “Come on, Parker.”

Peter stretches out an arm, squinting as he aims it just right, and slowly triggers his webshooter. Although their new and improved design means that the web fires much faster than they did before, it isn’t fast enough to catch the drone, which just jerks out of the way but still doesn’t make any attempt to leave.

The boy wrinkles his nose, a plan formulating in his head. He fires another strand of webbing at the drone, and just as it moves out of the way yet again, he uses the webshooter on his other arm to catch it. It works; the webbing attaches to the drone on the slanted nose of it’s main body. 

“Gotcha.” He grins.

It desperately tries to pull itself away but Peter is stronger. Without much difficulty he crawls back onto the rooftop, lands another web onto the drone’s body with his free hand and reels it closer to him as if he were fishing.

“Come on, come on, come on...”

The drone jerks left and right before it appears to realise it has no way of overpowering Peter in regards to strength. Instead it resorts to unsheathing the several guns it has hidden away in its body and, without giving Peter the time to react accordingly, begins to open fire on the boy.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Instinctively releasing his grip on the drone, he jumps behind the cover of a brick barbeque sitting close to the back of the rooftop. It continues to fire rapidly into it, sending splinters of smoldering brick exploding onto the top of his head. “Shit!”

When he peeks back out just a couple of seconds later he realises the drone is attempting it’s getaway and manages to stick another two web strands onto the back of it. In the heat of the moment, he doesn’t so much as hesitate; with every ounce of his strength he yanks the drone out of the air and slams it into the concrete rooftop, consequently shattering it.

“Oh. Oops.”

Slowly stepping out of his cover, he stares at the carnage. The three compartments that made up the drone have all split apart and lay scattered across the rooftop. It’s white metal plating is bent out of place and is peeling off the inner workings of the drone, which lay exposed and dispersed. There is no light in the slits that had glared at him so dangerously.

“That was dramatic,” he says to nobody in particular.

He begins to push all of the disseminated parts into one pile. With nothing to put it all in, he carefully constructs something akin to a sack using his web fluid and scoops it up at once. It’s going home with him; he’ll just bring it to the Avenger’s Tower after school tomorrow afternoon.

Securing the sack and throwing it over his shoulder, Peter checks his surroundings for the last time before finally heading back in the direction of his brink-of-collapse Queens apartment complex.

Something tells him that the next few days are going to be busy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's short - fucking sue me.  
> comments are always appreciated and will always be replied to. <3
> 
> [my discord server](https://discord.gg/SgGFvDC)  
> [my Tumblr blog](https://spicyjarvis.tumblr.com/)


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